Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

FINSBURY SQUARE BILL [Lords]

To be read a Second time Tomorrow.

PETITION

Nuclear Tests

Mr. Hastings: Mr. Speaker, I desire to present a Petition, signed by approximately 2,500 residents of Barking, against further experimental nuclear explosions. The Petition reads as follows:
To the honourable the Members of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The humble Petition of the undersigned residents of Barking showeth that the radiation from the explosions of nuclear weapons, being indestructible, is cumulative, and will end in the destruction of all life.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that experimental explosions of such weapons shall be stopped, and that negotiations be started with other countries so that an international agreement shall be drawn up and signed that they, with us, will end such experimental explosions.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

To lie upon the Table.

Oral Answers to Questions — PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

1914–1918 War Pensioners

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance the numbers of 1914–18 war pensioners 40 per cent. disabled and aged 58 to 64 years who died during the past two years.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): It is estimated that during the two years ended 31st March, 1957, there were about 3,900 deaths among 1914 war pensioners whose disablement was assessed at 40 per cent. or more and who were aged 58 to 64 years.

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will, in response to the recent requests he has received from representative organisations, give further consideration to the possibility of lowering the age for eligibility for the age allowance in order to give aid in time for all the ageing and severely disabled survivors of the 1914–18 war.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. I think that in its present form this allowance, which is not of course restricted to participants in the 1914–18 war, fulfils the purpose of concentrating additional help where on grounds of age it is most needed, and I doubt whether its extension to lower age groups, as suggested, should be given priority over other needs in the war pensions field.

Mr. Simmons: Will the Minister agree that the figures he gave in answer to Question No. 1 show that there is a rather high incidence of death between the ages of 58 and 64?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Naturally any deaths in this category are to be regretted, but the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that any allowance, the essence of which is that it is paid in respect of age, must necessarily be missed by some people who, whatever line of demarcation one selects, die before reaching that age. I am afraid that is inherent in this type of allowance.

Retirement and Old-Age Pensioners

Mr. Parkin: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what steps he is taking to collect and co-ordinate information about the change in costs of the special needs and habits of old people with a view to drawing up a weighted cost-of-living index as a guide to the real value of old-age pensions.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and National Service has collected information about the spending habits of old people in the course of an inquiry into household expenditure. I understand that he will shortly publish the results, but that he does not propose to draw up a special cost-of-living index relating to old people.

Mr. Parkin: Will the Minister appreciate that this was a special recommendation of the Phillips Committee, and that one need not necessarily limit oneself to investigations carried out by the Minister of Labour—as, indeed, it may be fair to comment that certain increases announced last week to the Minister and myself were based on a different kind of Select Committee's investigation of special need? Will he do his best, as Minister, to make it clear to the old folks that he accepts the need for a special cost-of-living index for old people, and will he do his best to speed up the publication of the information?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Before forming as firm a view as that, the hon. Gentleman might well await the publication of the information which my right hon. Friend will release before very long. As regards the question of having two separate indices, it must be borne in mind

that both the Cost-of-Living Advisory Committee and right hon. Gentlemen opposite in 1951 rejected the idea of two indices at the same time.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Since then we have had the Phillips Committee, which was set up by the previous Conservative Government, and, after very careful consideration, it came to the conclusion that there ought to be a special index. If the Minister is now to reject that recommendation, may we take it that he will set out fully the reasons why he rejects the unanimous Report which the Phillips Committee presented to the Government?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That is a question for my right hon. Friend. I think the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that my right hon. Friend always answers questions very fully.

Mrs. L. Jeger: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether he will introduce legislation to raise the £2 10s. earnings limit for retirement pensioners who have children at school.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. The earnings limit is a necessary means of maintaining the principle that pensions during the first five years after age of eligibility are conditional upon retirement, and the existence of dependent children, in respect of whom additions are made to the pension, does not affect this. The hon. Lady will be aware that the general earnings limit was raised last summer not only to the 50s. per week referred to in the Question but with a reduction of only 6d. in the shilling in respect of further earnings of £1 a week above this figure.

Mrs. Jeger: Will not the Minister look at the matter again? Surely there are very few retirement pensioners who have dependent children, and the very small extra sum which they receive makes it impossible for them to manage, and provides a very special reason for their continuing at work?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Lady will recall from an answer that I gave last week that the increases in the provision for dependent children which have been made in recent years are rather greater in proportion than other increases in the National Insurance system.

Mr. Hunter: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will state, at the latest convenient date,


the number of old-age pensioners in the country in receipt of retirement pensions who have applied for National Assistance.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have no later figure than that which I gave to the hon. Member on 6th May, to which I would refer him.

Mr. Hunter: Is the Minister aware that a report appeared in a national newspaper on Sunday to the effect that the Government intend to raise the old-age pension? If the report is correct, I assure the Minister that it will be welcomed by the country and by hon. Members. If he can make a statement before the Summer Recess, it will be very much appreciated.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am afraid that the result of the hon. Gentleman's newspaper reading does not arise on this Question.

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many old-age pensioners were applying for National Assistance in Salford at the latest convenient date.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am informed by the National Assistance Board that the County Borough of Salford is part of a substantially larger area served by two of the Board's offices, and that in that area on 25th June, 1957, 6,970 weekly National Assistance grants were being paid to persons receiving retirement pensions and 801 to persons receiving non-contributory old age pensions. Some of the grants provided for the requirements of a household with more than one pensioner.

Mr. Allaun: Since so many pensioners are trying to maintain appearances by existing on bread, margarine, tea and potatoes, as the recent Salford survey reports, will not the Minister do the human thing and increase the pension to £3? Does he appreciate that old people cannot wait?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The survey to which the hon. Member refers is interesting but far from comprehensive in its analysis of the situation. On the main issue, I have nothing to add to the statements which I have made from the Dispatch Box on this matter.

Mr. J. Griffiths: As the Salford survey is a very interesting and, I believe, very

important document, will the Minister make copies available to hon. Members in the Library?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I will, of course, consider that, but as it is not my survey I shall have to inquire as to its availability and the position of those to whom it really belongs.

Mrs. Castle: Is the Minister aware that even old-age pensioners who draw National Assistance are living at an absolute penury level because of the inadequacy of the National Assistance scales, and, therefore, the basic pension is obviously even more inadequate? Is it not undesirable that hon. Members should go away for their summer holidays before we do something to rectify the discrepancy between our standard of living and that of the old-age pensioners?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Lady raises a number of issues, but I must remind her that the real value, in terms of purchasing power, of the pension today is better than it was between 1948 and 1955.

Mr. Parkin: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will appoint a working party to devise means to stabilise to old-age pensioners the prices of minor necessities and amenities, such as bus fares and the cost of posting a letter, since even a small increase constitutes a disproportionately high burden upon the aged.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I doubt whether the appointment of such a body would be of value, and in any event I have no responsibility for the control of particular prices.

Mr. Parkin: Is there no way of getting the Minister to treat the matter seriously and with some human feeling? Will he try to bear in mind the things which are so important to old people? For instance, the cost of a single-stage bus fare may make a difference in the food which they can buy, whereas ordinary people could very well walk the distance. In such a case, or in the case of the postage for a letter, an increase of a halfpenny is a 20 per cent. increase. It is too much. Will the Minister try to find ways of stabilising the cost of some of these items for old people?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If the hon. Gentleman will study the answer, he will see that the matters to which he has referred do not come within my responsibility and I do not answer for them at the Dispatch Box. He has complained about bus fares. He should address his question on that subject to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation.

Mr. Parkin: In view of the rather unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's replies to this Question and previous Questions, I give notice that I will raise the matter again at the earliest opportunity. If the Minister would like time to make a statement—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has given notice that he will raise the subject later. That concludes this business now.

Mr. Parkin: Would it not be convenient to the Minister, Mr. Speaker, if I suggested to him that if it helped him I could put down an Amendment to the Ministerial Salaries Bill which is to be taken in Committee on Thursday?

Mr. Speaker: That has nothing to do with it.

Mr. Rankin: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will state, to the nearest convenient date, the number of old-age pensioners in Scotland and the number of these who are on National Assistance.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In March, 1957, there were approximately 430,000 retirement pensioners in Scotland, of whom just over 70,000 were also receiving weekly National Assistance grants. In addition, there were some 25,000 non-contributory old-age pensioners, of whom 14,000 were receiving supplementary assistance. Some of the grants provided for the requirements of a household with more than one pensioner.

Mr. Rankin: Does the Minister realise that his Answer means to a large section of old people in Scotland that he is now paying such a small sum as pension that in order to keep them living he has to pay a supplementation through another of his Departments so that they can go on drawing their old-age pension? Does he not think that is an absurd situation? Will he now say whether the report that he is to put an end to this by raising pensions all round is correct?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I do not think the intention of Parliament in passing the National Assistance Act that aid should be given in cases of need is absurd. On the contrary, it is a very valuable social service. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that in Scotland the percentage being supplemented is appreciably below that for England and Wales.

Sir T. Moore: In view of the obviously political character of this Question, can my right hon. Friend give us the figures for 1950–51?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Certainly, if my hon. Friend will be good enough to put down a Question.

Mr. Bence: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Burgh of Milngavie—

Mr. Nabarro: Who?

Mr. Bence: —the Burgh of Milngavie —has issued a statement to old-age pensioners informing them that they can apply to the National Assistance Board for payment of increased rents which have been imposed? Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that those old-age pensioners will be given the extra National Assistance to pay increased rents resulting from a differential rents scheme?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I have answered one or two Questions, as the hon. Member may be aware, on the general attitude of the National Assistance Board towards rent increases. I prefer not to add to that in respect of a particular case of which, in answer to the first part of the question, I was not aware up to now. If the hon. Member so wishes, I will certainly look into that case.

Rent Increases (Assistance)

Mr. Parkin: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if he will arrange to receive from the National Assistance Board special reports on the increased cost to the Board arising from rent increases permitted by the Rent Act.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, Sir. Ample information will in any event in due course be circulated in the National Assistance Board's Annual Report, but it is unlikely that the Board itself will have information of much value until the Act has been in operation for some time.

Mr. Parkin: Here again the Minister does not seem to realise how much his own initiative could help. Surely he should be watching most carefully the effect of this Act? Surely he should be interested in how much public money is being voted, through the medium of National Assistance, to landlords?

Mr. Speaker: This is Question Time. The hon. Member is really making a speech. If he has a question to ask, the House will be interested to listen to it.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I should assist nobody by promising to give information before accurate information is available.

National Assistance, London Region

Mr. Lipton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many National Assistance grants were in issue at the Brixton and Kennington area offices of the National Assistance Board at the end of 1951 and 1956, respectively.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am informed by the National Assistance Board that the combined number of weekly National Assistance grants current in the areas served by the Board's Brixton and Kennington Offices was 8,997 at the end of 1951 and 9,193, at the end of 1956.

Mr. Lipton: asked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance how many National Assistance grants were in issue in the London region at the end of 1951 and 1956, respectively.

Mr. Nabarro: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask a supplementary question to Question No. 9?

Mr. Speaker: No. We have passed from that Question. We are now on Question No. 10.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am informed by the National Assistance Board that the number of weekly National Assistance grants current in the Board's Inner London Region was 176,000 at the end of 1951 and 185,000 at the end of 1956.

Mr. Lipton: If, as the Minister keeps on saying, old-age pensioners have never

been so well off as they are today, why is it that more and more of them have to apply for National Assistance? In those circumstances, will he give an undertaking that he is taking note of the situation and will do something about it before the House rises for the Summer Recess?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentleman must not put into my mouth words which I have not used, do not mean, and do not intend to use. As his supplementary question is based on the wholly false hypothesis that I used such words, I feel that the latter part of it does not arise.

Mr. Nabarro: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the trend of the figures which he has given in response to this Question and the previous Question are equally applicable to the country as a whole? Can he say whether London is paying out more or less by way of National Assistance grants than the average for the whole country?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That involves a number of figures, and I should be grateful if my hon. Friend would table a Question on the subject.

Mr. S. Silverman: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether or not it is a fact that the proportion of old-age pensioners applying for and receiving National Assistance is increasing? If his answer is that the proportion is increasing, how does he reconcile it with his statement that old-age pensioners are better off now than they ever were previously?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentle-knows perfectly well that I used no such expression. I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to put wholly false words into my mouth. With regard to his supplementary question, however, he will be glad to know that the proportion, on a national basis, of retirement pensioners receiving supplementation from the National Assistance Board is lower than it was in 1952, 1953 and 1954.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Is it not a fact that since the last pensions increase was given the trend has been upwards and that at the end of 1956 it was greater than it was in 1948?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I cannot give the comparable figure for 1948 without notice. The figures have risen and fallen over the years, among other things, as the right hon. Gentleman knows well, for reasons of the movement in the Assistance scales themselves, and they have certainly increased since the Government last raised the Assistance scales.

Mr. Lipton: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL

Stocking (Costs)

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Paymaster-General to what extent he considered the cost of stocking coal surplus to requirements in sanctioning the recent increase in the price of coal.

The Paymaster-General (Mr. Reginald Maudling): The cost of stocking coal is normally considered by the Board in formulating proposals for price increases, but it is of course very difficult for it to predict exactly the movement of stocks.

Mr. Roberts: Is the Paymaster-General aware that the National Coal Board is transporting coal many miles to stockpile it? Does he not agree that as this coal is being stored for use by industry the cost should be borne by the industries which use it as well as by the National Coal Board?

Mr. Maudling: In the long run, the whole cost will be borne by the consumer. It cannot be borne by anyone else.

Prices

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: asked the Paymaster-General if he will issue a table showing the average rate of wages for coal miners during each of the last five years, together with the rise in

the price of coal, the increase in mine mechanisation and the average coal output per man for each of those years.

Mr. Maudling: As the Answer contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate a table in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Has not the price of coal been increased on at least 30 separate occasions since the mines were first nationalised, and is it not now nearly double what it was then? Are not the unfortunate taxpayers pouring some £1,000 million of their money into their mines, and are not the only thanks they get increased absenteeism and increased cost? How can any Government keep down the cost of living when coal, on which the ultimate cost of everything depends, keeps rising in price?

Mr. Maudling: I ask my hon. and gallant Friend to study the figures for which he asked before drawing deductions from them.

Mr. Robens: Is it not the case that there have been only five increases in the pithead price of coal and not 30 as the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggested? Is it not true that output per man-shift of British miners and output per man-year are higher than for any country in Europe and that British coal at the pithead is cheaper than anywhere in Europe? Is it not a bad thing that an hon. Member should use this House to denigrate our most vital industry where men are working under great difficulties to do a first-class job for the country?

Mr. Maudling: Without notice, I could not quote the exact figures, but much of what the right hon. Gentleman has said is perfectly true. On the other hand, it is very important we should recognise that output per man-year in 1956 was lower than in 1952. The whole House will agree that that is a matter for concern.

Following is the table:


COAL INDUSTRY


—
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956


Average weekly earnings per wage earner (a)
225s.
0d.
232s.
1d.
245s.
11d.
261s.
0d.
284s.
8d.


Average proceeds per ton of deep-mined output (b)
57s.
3d.
61s.
2d.
63s.
6d.
68s.
0d.
77s.
0d.


Percentage of total deep-mined coal output mechanically cut
82

83

84

86

87



Percentage of total deep-mined coal output power-loaded
4·9
5·9
7·3
9·8
14·1


Percentage of total deep-mined coal output mechanically conveyed
88

89

90

92

93



Output (tons) per man-year overall
299 (c)
297
302
299
298


(a) Including the value of allowances in kind. Average wage rates in the industry are not known.


(b) For 1955 and 1956, the figures shown exclude that part of the pithead price which was intended to recoup losses on imported coal. In the second half of 1955 this was equivalent to 2s. 10d. per ton saleable and in 1956 to 1s. 7d.


(c) Estimated; on basis of definition for 1953 and subsequent years.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Paymaster-General how much of the recent average increase of 6s. 6d. per ton in coal prices for householders accrues to the National Coal Board, and how much to distributors and merchants.

Mr. Maudling: 6s. 6d, was the average price increase at the pithead for all coals on 1st July and the whole of this increase accrues to the National Coal Board. On the same date, retail house coal prices were increased by additional small amounts to recompense merchants for increased costs of distribution.

Mr. Nabarro: Does my right hon. Friend realise how very greatly upset the general public is by the implications of his statement last Monday to the general effect that he is pursuing a deliberate policy of dear coal? Will he recant today and make it quite clear that he does not propose to put up the price of coal any more during the lifetime of this Parliament, having regard to the gravely inflationary effects of such a policy?

Mr. Maudling: If my hon. Friend would be kind enough to study what I said in reply to his supplementary question last week, he will find that it is precisely the opposite of what he has just said. I said there was no question at all of a deliberate dear coal policy.

Mr. Bence: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that on the Continent of Europe—

Mr. Nabarro: We do not live on the Continent.

Mr. Bence: —members of the Iron and Steel Community—

Mr. Nabarro: Why not go and join the Norwegians?

Mr. Bence: —recognise the advantages to the steel industry of this country of cheap coal? Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that there will be no attempt by the British coal industry to raise coal prices to the general level of prices of coal ruling on the Continental market?

Mr. Nabarro: Certainly not.

Mr. Maudling: I do not see any sign of that in the National Coal Board's policy at the present moment.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Paymaster-General, having regard to the recent coal price increases authorised by the Minister of Power having resulted in consequentially increased rail freight, steel, gas, coke and electricity charges, what estimate he has made of the influence of all these consequential increased costs upon future pithead coal prices; and what part of these consequential increased costs to the coal consumer he took into account when the coal price increase of 6s. 6d. per ton, average, was authorised, with effect from 1st July, 1957, by the Minister of Power.

Mr. Maudling: The direct consequential effects of the recent coal price increases are estimated to add about one-quarter of one per cent. to the costs of the National Coal Board's collieries. This is not therefore, a material consideration.

Mr. Nabarro: My right hon. Friend is evidently deliberately neglecting the fact—

Hon. Members: Question.

Mr. Nabarro: —that he fixes the price for the consumer. Will—

Hon. Members: Question.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think a question is coming.

Mr. Nabarro: As my right hon. Friend fixes the price to the consumer, will he pay some regard to the fact that, as freights have now been raised by 10 per cent. and the prices of gas, electricity, coke and steel are all going up, the National Coal Board will have to apply shortly for another price increase and the consumer is going to be hit again? Will not my right hon. Friend have some regard for these very gravely inflationary effects?

Mr. Maudling: If my hon. Friend once again will study what I have said, he will find once again that it is the opposite of what he has said.

Mr. Snow: Apart from all these matters that have been raised, is it not a fact that at a recent international conference on coal production the record of this country on safety in mines, on which figures were produced, is one of which the National Coal Board need not be ashamed?

Mr. Maudling: I think that has been generally recognised, but we are now considering costs and prices, on which the record is much more alarming.

Sir P. Agnew: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this increased price of coal to householders in Worcestershire is causing very great dissatisfaction, in view of the fact that the National Coal Board is buying coal from abroad at a very high price and selling it at a loss to industrial users in the Midlands area?

Mr. Maudling: I quite agree that these recent increases are matters of very considerable concern indeed, and nobody for one moment would deny it. On the question of the price of imported coal, there are some other Questions later on the Order Paper.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Paymaster-General whether he will state, when the

Minister of Power authorised the increase in coal prices of an average of 6s. 6d. per ton from 1st July, 1957, what aggregate sum of additional revenue in a full year such increase was designed to yield to the National Coal Board; for what purposes; what sum the National Coal Board asked Ministerial authorisation for, both per ton increase in price and aggregate sum; what reduction in the National Coal Board demands was made by the Minister of Power; and, having regard to the inflationary effects of the price increase, whether he will now make a full statement concerning the negotiations.

Mr. Maudling: As the National Coal Board have announced, the recent price increase is estimated to yield additional revenue amounting to £66 million in a full year, and they have explained for what main purposes this money is required. Increases in the price of coal other than to the domestic consumer do not require authorisation by my noble Friend, but they are the subject of consultations between him and the Board. These consultations are confidential and must remain so.

Mr. Nabarro: Can I do anything to break up the "kissing ring" between the Minister of Power, my right hon. Friend and Sir James Bowman? Why is it that prices always go up, with never any resistance from my right hon. Friend in keeping these prices stable? Who is going to protect the consumer in this country, other than myself?

Mr. Maudling: I am not an expert on the subject of breaking up "kissing rings", but the fact is that costs have been rising, and it was recognised by both the Industrial and Domestic Coal Consumers' Councils that these prices were inevitable in the face of rising costs.

Mr. Nabarro: In view of the grossly unsatisfactory nature of these Ministerial replies, I beg to give notice that I shall take steps to persuade you, Mr. Speaker, to give me an Adjournment debate or otherwise allow me to raise this matter again.

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Paymaster-General what has been the percentage increase in the retail price of coal in the London area compared to the percentage increase in the price of fuel oil, excluding tax, in the London area between 1947 and the recent ending of rationing.

Mr. Maudling: On 18th May last, the retail price of Group 4, an average house coal, had increased by about 100 per cent. Fuel oil is not normally sold retail, but at the same date the wholesale price of light fuel oil had increased by 69 per cent.

Mr. Ridsdale: Does not the Paymaster-General's Answer show that private enterprise is far more capable of keeping prices down than nationalised bodies?

Mr. Maudling: While probably agreeing with my hon. Friend on the general attitude to the question of nationalisation, I do not think one can draw such a deduction from these particular figures.

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Paymaster-General how much the price of Grade 2 house coal, both in terms of money and percentage, has risen in London and north-east Essex, including Harwich, respectively, since 1st January, 1947.

Mr. Maudling: In London by about 106s., or 118 per cent., and in Harwich by about 116s., or 144 per cent.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is the Minister aware that one of the main pointers in regard to the cost of living of pensioners and those living on fixed incomes is their fuel bills? Does not he agree that the nationalised industries should be warned that successive wage rises, unaccompanied by production increases, are making this section of the community despair? As the opportunity occurs, will he see that limitations are put upon price increases in the nationalised industries?

Mr. Maudling: It is true that the cost of fuel falls very heavily upon pensioners and people living on fixed incomes. That is one of the strongest reasons for doing everything possible to increase productivity. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend about that.

Summer Prices Scheme

Captain Pilkington: asked the Paymaster-General what reports and representations he has received regarding the supply of coal to domestic consumers during the period of reduced summer prices; and how far he is satisfied with the arrangements for its distribution during this time.

Mr. Maudling: I have received some complaints that merchants in London and

the South have been unable to meet quickly a proportion of the orders placed during the period of lowest summer prices. The object of the scheme was to attract orders early in the slack season, an object in which it has clearly succeeded, and it could not be expected, nor was it any part of the scheme, that all the orders—which could be for a full year's ration —would be met within the period.

Captain Pilkington: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is very wide indignation about this? Could not some arrangement be made whereby when people have ordered coal in the summer they pay the prices then ruling and not the higher prices of later on?

Mr. Maudling: It was announced by the National Coal Board in response to requests from the Domestic Coal Consumers Council that any consumer in the South who placed an order before 9th June would get his coal delivered at the price ruling at the time he placed his order.

Mr. H. Hynd: Will the Paymaster-General point out to his hon. and gallant Friend that the distribution side of the coal industry is not nationalised?

Mr. Maudling: There has been some confusion in this case arising from the form of the announcement, and I am sure that it will be made clearer in the future.

Stocks

Mr. Moss: asked the Paymaster-General the latest available figures of distributed stocks of coal; and what remains undistributed.

Mr. Maudling: Seventeen million, nine hundred and fifty-one thousands tons and 6,259,000 tons, respectively, at 29th June, 1957.

Mr. Moss: While the figures of stocks are usually high at this time, is the Paymaster-General aware that the Wath-on-Dearne Urban District Council is using the high figure of stocks in support of an argument that opencast production should cease, and that this council has been supported by the Meriden Rural District Council when the latter received a circular letter? Would the Minister like to say that this high level of stocks is no justification for the cessation of opencast production?

Mr. Maudling: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to say that these stocks are exceptionally high but that changes in the weather or a sudden increase in industrial production might cause them to disappear; the fact is that we still need all the coal we can possibly get.

Capital Investment

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Paymaster-General what proportion of the capital investment for the coal industry since 1947 has been financed out of the floating debt; and what proportion out of the funded debt.

Mr. Maudling: Advances by the Minister of Power to the National Coal Board during the years 1947 to 1956 represented about half of the capital investment in the industry during the period, but it is not possible to relate these advances to any particular source of borrowing by the Exchequer.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is the Paymaster-General satisfied with the present structure of raising capital and that the public are getting value for money in the very large sums now being invested in the nationalised industry?

Mr. Maudling: The National Coal Board aims at and obtains a good return on the investments which it makes. I do not think one could ever be satisfied that everything possible is being done. Clearly, a great deal more is capable of being done.

Mr. Nicholson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this Question is a crucial one, because in so far as capital investment is financed out of the floating debt to that extent inflation goes roaring ahead, but that it does not go roaring ahead if it is financed out of the funded debt?

Mr. Maudling: It is quite impossible to draw a distinction. If my hon. Friend borrowed £5 from each of four people and put it all into a bank and then lent £10 out of that £20, it would be quite impossible to say from which source the money was coming, after it had been pooled.

Imports and Exports

Mr. Palmer: asked the Paymaster-General if he will make a statement on Government policy in relation to the future import and export of coal.

Mr. Maudling: As I stated in the debate on 30th April, our objective is to do without coal imports and to restore the cuts in coal exports made in 1955.

Mr. Palmer: Does not the Paymaster-General agree that, in view of the fact that the coal supply position now is at least a little easier, this is an excellent opportunity for the Government to revise their policy generally upon this issue?

Mr. Maudling: I do not think that it is quite as simple as that, because the coal supply situation is easier in small coal in particular, and our customers on the Continent are in an equally easy position. But the National Coal Board is vigorously pursuing a policy of exporting as much as it can.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF POWER

Electricity Supplies (Interruption)

Mr. Hastings: asked the Paymaster-General if he will give a general direction to the Central Electricity Authority to provide an alternate supply of electricity to all areas so that all current may not be eliminated in cases of severe storm.

Mr. Maudling: No, Sir. The electricity authorities are already spending large sums to safeguard supplies during emergencies and the cost of attempting to provide against all risks would be prohibitive.

Mr. Hastings: Does the Paymaster-General realise that in the Kingwood area of South Oxfordshire on 30th June electricity was cut off for two and a half hours; that that area includes a moderate sized hospital and other important institutions? Cannot something be done to avoid that sort of inconvenience? How many areas during the recent storms have been in a similar position of having their electricity cut off for several hours?

Mr. Maudling: The weather conditions were quite exceptional on 30th June, and there were reports of interruptions in supply from four areas. This is a very important matter, but it is impossible to provide for every contingency. The individual area boards are anxious to do what they can, particularly for hospitals. If I can do anything to help, perhaps the hon. Member will let me know.

Mr. Grant-Ferris: Does my right hon. Friend realise that there are many parts of the country, especially in my constituency, which have no supply of electricity at all. Will he see that they are given priority?

Mr. Maudling: One must measure one priority against another.

Mr. Robens: While accepting what the right hon. Gentleman says about the impossibility of supplying an alternative on the grid system, is it not the case that all hospitals have an alternative emergency supply for operating theatres? If there is a case of a hospital without one, is that not something with which his Ministerial colleague should deal immediately?

Mr. Maudling: There is a later Question on this subject to my right hon. Friend.

National Energy Requirements

Mr. Moss: asked the Paymaster-General if he will estimate, in the light of the most recent information available to him, what proportion of the national energy requirements will be met in 1965 from coal, oil, hydro-electricity, and nuclear power stations, respectively, showing how this compares with 1956.

Mr. Maudling: On present supply plans, we could expect the percentage of inland energy requirements met by oil and hydro-electricity to increase from 15 to about 20 per cent. and from half a per cent. to three-quarters of a per cent., respectively, while nuclear power grows to four or five per cent. The percentage met by coal may fall from 85 to 75 per cent., but the tonnage of coal used at home should increase appreciably as should the amount exported.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Agricultural Colleges (Students)

Mr. G. Jeger: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many applications he has received for financial grants to enable students to undertake agricultural college courses for the national diploma in the forthcoming session; and how many awards he has made.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. J. B. Godber): Ninety-six applications have been received for awards for diploma courses. Ten applicants have been offered awards for diploma courses at agricultural colleges beginning next October, and three for diploma courses at universities and farm institutes.

Mr. Jeger: In view of the large number of applicants, does not the hon. Member think that more of these courses should be made avaliable if we are to obtain a more scientifically conducted agriculture in future years?

Mr. Godber: The hon. Member should remember that the bulk of the awards made to the sons of agricultural workers and others in the rural areas come not so much from my Ministry, but from local authority awards. Only a very marginal number are made by my Ministry.

Mr. Jeger: But does not the Minister realise that local authorities differ from one area to another in the sort of scholarships they give and the assistance they give to local boys? More assistance coming from the centre would be gratefully received, and used to better advantage.

Mr. Godber: In general, I would have thought that local authorities deal with this matter fairly adequately. Only a very few of these grants are available. They were instituted a long time ago, before local authority ones were available.

Mr. G. Jeger: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what financial grants are available for students wishing to take a two-year course at an agricultural college.

Mr. Godber: Students taking courses at agricultural colleges are eligible for awards from their local education authorities. In addition, there are a limited number of Ministry scholarships for the sons and daughters of agricultural workers.

Mr. Jeger: It is precisely in the category of the sons and daughters of agricultural workers that I ask him whether he should not extend the assistance that he is giving? The sons and daughters of agricultural workers most need assistance. If there are difficulties with regard to local


authorities, would it not be better if central scholarships and central grants were made available by the Ministry itself?

Mr. Godber: I agree with the hon. Member absolutely that that is where we need to encourage the students to come from. I accept that absolutely, but I do not follow him the rest of the way. If he knows of difficulties in particular areas, I should be very glad to look into them.

Cartridges (Price Rebate Scheme)

Mr. Vane: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food the cost of the subsidy on cartridges for shooting pigeons over the latest convenient period; and whether he is satisfied with the working of the scheme.

Mr. Godber: The cost of the rebate on cartridges for the twelve months ended 31st March last was about £42,000. The new arrangements introduced last year have led to a considerable improvement in the working of the scheme, which has been running without any real difficulties.

Mr. Vane: Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the administration of the scheme does not cost any substantial sum in addition to this £42,000? Will he look ahead and see if he cannot do away with this subsidised cartridge scheme, which seems quite unnecessary? In view of the amount of damage pigeons do, people ought to be encouraged to shoot them without a subsidy or a bribe.

Mr. Godber: We are considering the future position, but I think that the scheme is doing a valuable amount of work. I am advised that over two million birds are regarded as having been shot last year as a result of this scheme, which is a benefit.

Mr. Paget: Are any unsubsidised cartridges being bought by farmers?

Mr. Godber: I am advised that the amount being bought under this scheme is about 5 per cent. of the total.

Mr. Paget: Used by farmers?

Mr. Peyton: Will the Minister look at the matter again? I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that there is no reason why people should not take action in their own interests, without having a present made to them at the taxpayer's expense. I hope that my hon. Friend

will look at this and similar schemes and see if he can reduce the expense.

Mr. Godber: I have been looking at this scheme only recently, and I am satisfied that it is performing a useful function to the agricultural community in helping to keep down these pests.

Casualty Animals (Slaughtering)

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will make compulsory the slaughter of casualty animals in rooms separate from those used for normal slaughtering.

Mr. Godber: No, Sir. The slaughter of casualty animals may often require special care, but my right hon. Friend does not think it would be reasonable to compel all slaughterhouses to provide separate rooms for this purpose.

Mr. Willey: In view of the fact that several widespread cases of food poisoning have been traced to such slaughter, will the Joint Parliamentary Secretary look at the matter again and see whether we cannot follow the standards enforced in many other countries and so avoid this danger to our health?

Mr. Godber: I will look at the matter again, but I would remind the hon. Member that the Inter-Departmental Committee on Slaughterhouses did not include this as one of its recommendations.

Safety, Health and Welfare Regulations

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food with what bodies he is holding consultations about safety in agriculture; and what draft Regulations he hopes next to bring forward.

Mr. Godber: Before making any Regulations under the Agriculture (Safety, Health and Welfare Provisions) Act, 1956, my right hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland must consult such organisations as appear to them to represent the interests concerned. These include on all occasions the organisations representing employers, workers and landowners; other bodies are consulted according to the subject. The list of organisations so far consulted is rather long, and I will, with permission, circulate it with the OFFICIAL REPORT.
The draft of the Agriculture (Power Take-Off) Regulations, 1957, designed to secure the guarding of power take-offs and power take-off shafts, was laid before the House on 4th July; we hope that Regulations to deal with the safe use of ladders will soon be laid; and organisations are now being consulted on proposals for avoiding accidents to children.

Mr. Hill: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. In future consultations, will he ask the interests concerned to combine with the Ministry in looking into the possibility of making a film illustrative of farm dangers, and methods of avoiding them?

Mr. Godber: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that suggestion. I will gladly look into it.

Mr. Willey: Of course we welcome these Regulations, and urge the Minister to press on with further Regulations, but will he look into the point being raised as to the possible steps to take to advertise the way of avoiding these dangers?

Mr. Godber: I agree with the hon. Member that the greater amount of publicity that we can give to this matter the better.

Following is the information:

AGRICULTURE (SAFETY, HEALTH AND WELFARE PROVISIONS) ACT, 1956

The following organisations have been consulted on proposals for regulations:

Organisation and proposals on which consulted

Accident Offices Association—2,3,4.

Agricultural Central Co-operative Association Ltd.-2,3,4.

Agricultural Engineers Association—2,3,4.

Agricultural Machinery and Tractor Dealers' Association—All.

Agricultural Research Council—1.

Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry —1.

Association of County Councils in Scotland—4.

Association of Municipal Corporations—4.

Boston and District Gangmasters Association—All.

British Medical Association—4.

British Red Cross Society—1.

British Standards Institution—2,3.

Company Chemists Association Ltd. (Retail)— 1.

Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland—4.

Co-operative Insurance Society Ltd.—2,3.

Country Landowners Association—All.

County Councils Association—4.

Horticultural Trades Association—1.

Institution of British Agricultural Engineers—2,3,4.

Medical and Surgical Plaster Makers' Conference—1.

Medical Research Council—1.

National Association of Agricultural Contractors (and constituent Associations)—All.

National Association of Corn and Agricultural Merchants (Scottish Council)—All.

National Association of Corn and Agricultural Merchants (England and Wales)—1.

National Council of Women of Great Britain—4.

National Farmers' Union (England and Wales) —All.

National Farmers,' Union of Scotland—All.

National Farmers' Union Mutual Insurance Society—2,3,4.

National Federation of Women's Institutes—4.

National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs —4.

National Institute of Agricultural Engineering —2,3.

National Pharmaceutical Union—1.

National Union of Agricultural Workers—All.

National Union of General and Municipal Workers—All.

National Union of General and Municipal Workers (Scottish District)—All.

Nursery and Seed Trade Association Ltd.—1.

Royal Agricultural Society of England—All.

Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society—1.

Royal Forestry Society of England and Wales—1,2,3.

Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland—All.

Royal Horticultural Society—1.

Royal Scottish Forestry Society—All.

Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents —2,3,4.

Royal Welsh Agricultural Society—All.

Rural District Councils Association—4.

Scottish Agricultural Machinery Association—All.

Scottish Association of Young Farmers' Clubs —4.

Scottish Counties of Cities Association—4.

Scottish Landowners' Federation—All.

Scottish Seed and Nursery Trade Association—1.

Scottish Trades Union Congress—All.

Seed Trade Association of the United Kingdom Inc.—1.

Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Ltd.—2,4.

Surgical Dressings Manufacturers' Association —1.

Surgical Textile Conference—1.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain—.

The St. John Ambulance Association—1.

The St. John Ambulance Brigade—1.

Trades Union Congress—All.

Transport and General Workers' Union (Agricultural Section England and Wales)—All.

Transport and General Workers' Union (Scottish Farm Workers' Section)—All.

Truck and Ladder Manufacturers Association —3.

Urban District Councils Association—4.

Welsh Agricultural Organisation Society Ltd.—2,3,4.

Note:

1 = First Aid Regulations.

2 = Power Take-offs Regulations.

3 = Ladders Regulations.

4 = Children Regulations.

Australian Wheat and Flour

Mr. Russell: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he proposes to take to ensure that the United Kingdom fulfils the hope expressed in the Anglo-Australian Agreement of February, 1957, that our imports of Australian wheat and flour would not fall below 750,000 tons a year.

Mr. Godber: Those arrangements are between the United Kingdom flour millers and the Australian Wheat Board, but my right hon. Friend keeps the position under review and will consult as necessary with the trades concerned.

Mr. Russell: Is my hon. Friend aware that last calendar year the total of wheat and wheat substitutes did not reach the 750,000 tons a year level? Can he give some assurance that Australian wheat growers will not be let down as were the meat producers over the weekend?

Mr. Godber: On the first part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, my advice is that there is no likelihood that the figure will not be reached. As regards the second part, I really must tell him that I do not think that there is any justification for putting a question in that form. In fact, the Australian meat producers have not been let down. We are willing to take all the meat that they desire to send. The only difference, if any, is in our estimation of the future market in this country.

Food Costs

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are the up-to-date figures of the cost of providing an adequate diet for representative groups of the community.

Mr. Godber: My right hon. Friend cannot give figures for the cost of an adequate diet, because this covers a number of requirements, including palatability, flavour, variety, and ease of preparation, on which the demands and preferences of consumers differ considerably. But he would expect a diet designed merely to supply known nutrient requirements to cost less than is actually spent by any group in the community. The range of actual household expenditure on food per head, according to the National Food Survey, in 1956 was from

17s. 6d. per head per week in the largest families, with four or more children, to 37s. 11d. for adult couples under 55. The average was 27s. 4d. in England and Wales and 27s. in Scotland.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: Would the Parliamentary Secretary be prepared to look at this matter again in view of the report published by the British Medical Association in June, 1933, which exposed a general lack of adequate diets among various categories of people in this country? Surely, a similar report could be produced bringing the information up to date and then we should have a sociological index which would, I am sure, demonstrate that a good many old people and some larger families are living at rather low levels of nutrition?

Mr. Godber: I will examine that matter, but I think we have adequate information at the present time. I do not agree that a large number of people are living below the level of nutrition. The hon. Member mentioned older people. The figure for old-age pensioners is 24s. 9d. a week and compares not unfavourably with a number of other groups.

Mr. Willey: As there have been one or two surveys on old-age pensioners which are very disturbing, will the Parliamentary Secretary look again at this and see whether he can get the figures up to date?

Mr. Godber: My right hon. Friend is concerned to try to speed up the figures, but it is a complicated matter and unless we keep them accurate they are of no value. It takes some time to work them out.

Mr. Griffiths: Will the hon. Gentleman's Department consider carefully the disclosures contained in the recent reports about Sunderland and Salford, which are of great importance?

Mr. Godber: I will gladly give that assurance.

Maize

Mr. Russell: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he is aware that there is a large surplus of maize in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland; and what steps he proposes to take to persuade importers to buy more


maize from the Federation and less from the United States of America and the Argentine Republic.

Mr. Godber: The import of maize is a matter for private importers. They have greatly increased their purchases from the Federation and there is no reason to think they will not buy more as shipments can be arranged.

Mr. Russell: Is my hon. Friend aware that last year we spent £26 million on buying maize from the United States and £4 million on buying maize from the Argentine, with both of which countries we have an unfavourable balance of trade? Is it not wrong to spend money in dollar countries when there is maize from the Federation for which a market is required?

Mr. Godber: There is a slight difference in the qualities of the maize, but the greatest difficulty in increasing the supply from the Federation is that created by the lack of shipping, which is definitely a limiting factor. This year, until the end of May, no maize has been imported from the Argentine, whereas imports from Rhodesia and Nyasaland are already considerably up on the total last year.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF SUPPLY

Ordnance Factories

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Supply (1) to what extent he has sought the views of trade union leaders on the possibilities of converting Royal Ordnance factories to civil use as the defence programme runs down;
(2) if he will set up a committee, with trade union representation, to consider the possibilities of converting Royal Ordnance factories, or parts thereof, to civil production.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply (Mr. W. J. Taylor): My right hon. Friend already has satisfactory arrangements for consultation with the trades unions through the Ministry of Supply Joint Industrial Council, of which I am the Chairman. The Council has frequently discussed the question of civil work in the Royal Ordnance factories. My right hon. Friend also discussed at a special meeting of the

Council the future of the Royal Ordnance factories with representatives of the shop stewards of all factories on 7th May.

Mr. Swingler: Will the Parliamentary Secretary give an assurance that no irrevocable action will be taken now, either by way of further redundancies, the closing down of factories or the selling of them to private interests, before the views of the trade unions and shop stewards have been considered and the Minister has reported upon them to the House?

Mr. Taylor: I cannot give any such assurance. I can say that my right hon. Friend is satisfied that the existing machinery in the Ministry of Supply for consultation with trade unions, both at headquarters and factory level, is adequate.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Supply if he will give further consideration to the possibilities of producing mining machinery and railway equipment at the Royal Ordnance Factory at Radway Green; and if he will consult local trade union representatives about the matter.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: Discussions are taking place with British Railways which, I hope, may lead to work fitting for this Factory and which will not interfere with the main production lines.

Mr. Swingler: I appreciate that answer. May I ask whether the Parliamentary Secretary is aware that there is a definite shortage of capital goods, not only in the United Kingdom but also in the Colonial Territories? Did it not emerge from the Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers that there is a great need to produce capital goods in Britain for the Commonwealth? Is he aware that factories like the Royal Ordnance Factory at Radway Green would be admirable for this purpose?

Mr. Taylor: The question of the utilisation of Royal Ordnance factories is receiving the attention of my right hon. Friend. I will convey to him what the hon. Member has said, but I cannot accept all his implications.

Mr. D. Griffiths: asked the Minister of Supply what steps he is proposing to take for placing further orders at the Royal Ordnance Factory, Maltby.

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Supply what steps he proposes taking to maintain stable employment at the Royal Ordnance Factory, Dalmuir, Clydebank.

Mr. Ernest Davies: asked the Minister of Supply if he will state the extent to which he anticipates that the establishment at the Royal Ordnance Factory, Enfield, will be affected by the reduction in the defence programme.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: The future of these and the other Royal Ordnance factories is under consideration at the present time. My right hon. Friend hopes to make an announcement shortly.

Mr. Griffiths: Will the Parliamentary Secretary give an assurance that the Royal Ordnance factory at Maltby, where there is first-class machinery, is given opportunities equal to those provided for private industry?

Mr. Taylor: I quite agree that there is a first-class factory at Maltby. In common with all the others, the future of that establishment is at present under consideration and I cannot anticipate the statement shortly to be made by my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Bence: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that the Royal Ordnance Factory at Dalmuir is the only electrical engineering plant in the whole of Scotland, and will he give an assurance that he will do everything in his power to continue the employment of the factory in the manufacture of civil work as was done after 1949?

Mr. Taylor: I agree that Dalmuir is a very fine engineering establishment. I have seen it. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will do everything in my power, as will my right hon. Friend, to ensure that the factory at Dalmuir is continued in full employment so far as possible and that civil production will be introduced if the necessary arrangements can be made.

Mr. Davies: Can the Parliamentary Secretary say when this announcement will be made by his right hon. Friend? Does he realise that people employed in the factories are concerned about the future and that the sooner the statement is made the better?

Mr. Taylor: I appreciate that. My information is that the statement will be made quite shortly. I can say no more than that today.

Mr. Mayhew: asked the Minister of Supply on what recent occasions, and for what reason, sub-contracting has been undertaken by the Royal Ordnance Factory, Woolwich, for private firms engaged on public contracts.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: It is not the Department's practice to seek details of the main contracts in cases in which sub-contract work is undertaken for industrial concerns. Those known to be associated with contracts placed by the Ministry of Supply are, however, small in number and value. It would be wrong to assume that the main contracts could in such cases appropriately have been placed with the Royal Ordnance factories in the first place.

Mr. Mayhew: asked the Minister of Supply if he will make a statement on the future of the Royal Ordnance Factory, Woolwich.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: The rôle of Woolwich in the Royal Ordnance factory organisation will be that described by the then Minister of Supply in his statement in reply to a Question by the hon. Member on 26th February, 1954. As regards the future level of employment at the factory, I have nothing to add to the reply given to his Question on 3rd July.

Mr. Mayhew: Is the Minister aware that Woolwich Arsenal is underemployed? Is he aware that it is one of the most versatile and adaptable industrial units in the country, and will he therefore give the assurance that it will have at least as much opportunity of offsetting declining defence orders with civil work as private industry?

Mr. Taylor: It is still intended that the future of the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich will be that announced by the then Minister of Supply in February, 1954. The factory will concentrate on experimental work, plant production, modification and re-conditioning of equipment, the manufacture of tools, gauges and so on. The special position of the Woolwich Factory is very much in the mind of my right hon. Friend.

CIVIL USES OF ATOMIC ENERGY (ANGLO-AMERICAN AGREEMENT)

Mr. Gower: asked the Prime Minister what considerations prompted the decision to exchange British information about generation and civil application of nuclear power for information from the United States of America about submarines powered by nuclear energy; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Maudling: I have been asked to reply.
The Agreement with the United States for co-operation in the civil uses of atomic energy, concluded in 1955 and extended in 1956, provides for mutual assistance and exchange of information over a wide range of subjects. Under this Agreement, detailed arrangements have recently been concluded for transmission of information on nuclear propulsion of submarines and on nuclear reactors of the Calder Hall type; but these arrangements were concluded as separate transactions and did not constitute a direct exchange of the nature suggested in the Question.

Mr. Gower: Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that what informa-

tion has been exchanged so far has proved good business from the point of view of this country and that we have not been giving away information which, in the long run, might be much more useful than the information we have obtained?

Mr. Maudling: In agreements of this kind for the regular exchange of information, it is wrong to try to balance one item against another. Over the period of the operation of these agreements, both sides have derived great benefit from them.

Mr. Peyton: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that, for one reason or another, the United States Government have been extraordinarily niggardly in their co-operation since the war? Will he assure the House that our hard-won advantage—it was won at great cost—will not lightly be cast away?

Mr. Maudling: That is much in the mind of my right hon. Friend.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Ordered,
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock.—[Mr. R. A. Butler.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[19TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir GORDON TOUCHE in the Chair]

CIVIL ESTIMATES AND ESTIMATES FOR REVENUE DEPARTMENTS, 1957–58

CLASS V VOTE 4. MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £15,762,610, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1958, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Health and the Board of Control; expenses in connection with welfare food services and food hygiene; expenditure on the Polish health services; port health administration; residential accommodation for the aged, infirm, &amp;c.; purchases on repayment for other Government Departments; and sundry other services, including a subscription to the World Health Organisation. [£12,000,000 has been voted on account.]

Whereupon Motion made, and Question, That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.—[Mr. Oakshott]—put and agreed to.

Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

MENTAL ILLNESS AND MENTAL DEFICIENCY (REPORT)

3.32 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. J. K. Vaughan-Morgan): I beg to move,
That this House takes note of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency.
My only regret in standing at this Box today is that I take the place of my right hon. Friend. I can assure the House that he is making good progress. That it will be a matter of signal regret to him not to be here today I know, because this is an occasion to which he had been looking forward a very long time.
I think that we can offer our warmest congratulations to Lord Percy and the members of the Royal Commission not

only on the Report they have produced, but on its being unanimous, which gives added weight to the opinions expressed therein. I feel that it must also be a matter of great pride to us that Members of this House served on that Royal Commission. I should like, also, to echo the praise which is expressed in the Report by the Royal Commission for the work of the secretary, Miss Hedley, of the Ministry of Health.
The Report was published five weeks ago and has been well received both in the general and medical Press. For my part, I am glad that we are having a debate now. This is an important Report involving, as it does, the health and well-being of so many of our fellow citizens, and touching, as it does, so many different aspects of public and private life.
I cannot as yet make any statement of the Government's views on the Commission's recommendations, almost all of which require detailed discussion with local authorities and hospital authorities. This applies to recommendations which might not require new legislation just as much as to those which would.
I have asked all those authorities, the professional associations and the other bodies interested, to let us have their views by the end of September, which, I understand, is the minimum period they may need to look into the implications of the Report.
Nevertheless, while these discussions and conferences are going on, it is desirable that we should at this stage collect the opinions of the House on the Report and on the issues, some of which may be contentious, which it raises. I can assure the House that the Government will consider very carefully everything which is said by hon. Members today.
I do not, therefore, propose to detain the House for very long. This should be a back benchers' debate. I propose, first, to deal only very briefly with the content of the Report and, secondly, to give the House a general account of some of the developments in recent years, not all of which are known.
The general principles underlying the Commission's Report are in accord with recent trends in the mental health services. It is held that mental and mental deficiency services should be brought into line wherever possible with general health


services and compulsion used only when positively necessary for the protection of society or in the interests of the patient.
No doubt we are all in agreement with these general principles. Major recommendations may be summarised as follows. First, to review the duties of hospitals and local authorities in regard to mental health so as to bring them into line with their other duties and to encourage the use wherever suitable of other general social services by mental patients.
Secondly, to expand the community services, including residential services, for all groups of mental patients.
Thirdly, the recognition in the future of three main groups of patients—mentally ill, psychopathic, severely sub-normal—instead of two as now.
Fourthly, by abolishing the designation of hospitals. Every hospital suitable for the purpose will be free to accept patients either informally or under compulsion if necessary.
Fifthly, a revision of the procedures of admission and discharge and of the methods of review where compulsion has been used and the lessening of the present distinctions in this respect between the mentally ill and the mental defective.
These are formidable proposals, and the House will, therefore, fully understand why consultation is necessary even as regards those recommendations which can be implemented without legislation. These are the proposals on which we are seeking the views of the House today.
Let me turn now to certain aspects of the current picture. A word, first, about the attitude of the public to mental health. The enlightenment of public opinion, which began perhaps a generation ago, has improved remarkably in recent years, particularly since mental and mental deficiency hospitals became an accepted part of the hospital services. The public thinks less in terms of inmates, asylums and institutions, and more of hospitals, patients and nurses. It is not the words which are used which matter; it is the attitude which they express with which we are most concerned, and the public is now more sympathetic and more enlightened.
This process has been helped by many things. The most important is the

increasing number of patients who are admitted and who, having been successfully treated, speak of their experiences openly to their friends and relations. The open days at the hospitals, the work of the Leagues of Friends and other voluntary bodies—these are factors which are helping to make mental and mental deficiency hospitals what they should always have been, a part of the community which they serve.
I must mention, too, the work of specialist bodies such as the National Association for Mental Health and the Central Council for Health Education. All the work that the B.B.C. has done, particularly in the last year, is immensely appreciated. Above all, the attitude of the Press has improved with growing knowledge, although, alas, there are still a few pockets of irresponsibility whose attitude is hopelessly old-fashioned, and who pander to an appetite for sensationalism.
All of these activities and the work of the various professional bodies, too numerous to mention today, are beginning to make themselves felt in the greater sympathy and understanding which the public show towards the mentally ill.
Now, since it figures so largely in the Report, let me say a word about the services for the mentally ill and the mentally defective provided already in the community. Since the end of the war there has been a remarkable expansion in local health authority services for care and after-care along the lines now endorsed by the Royal Commission. The most dramatic developments have been, quite rightly, among the services which take care of children. The Child Guidance Service and welfare centres and the work of health visitors have a contribution to make to fostering mental health and preventing maladjustment, and subsequent serious disturbances later in life.
But the most striking development of these services has been in the provision of training centres for the mentally defective. Most of these are primarily for children, where they are taught good personal habits and, within the limits of their disability, trained to be as independent and useful as possible.
In 1948, there were 100 centres. Today, there are 312. In 1948, the number


receiving training was 4,000. Today, the number under training is 15,500. But there is more to be done, for there are still over 8,000 reported suitable for training, but not yet receiving it. Another new and promising development is the arrangements which are made to take a mental defective into hospital temporarily to help the family over a crisis, or just to have a holiday. But there is more to be done on these lines.
When it comes to the local authority services for the mentally ill, it is not so easy to point to any obvious developments. An increasing amount is being done along lines with which we are already familiar. But we must remember that until 1948 the work which was done was centred by the local authorities on their own mental hospitals, and since the break which took place then they have had to develop their own services with a shortage of trained staff, and in fields which, at least in their preventive aspects, are still largely unexplored.
Home visiting by welfare workers, either as part of after care or to deal with early signs of mental disturbance is the main instrument. But much more remains still to do in this field of domiciliary work.
The main new scope for local authorities would, under the Royal Commission recommendation, lie in the provision of residential care on a considerable scale for suitable mental patients, either under the National Assistance Act or under the National Health Service Act. The implications of these are far-reaching, and will need very careful consideration and discussion, but the House should appreciate how much has, in fact, already been done in different ways in different areas.
Of course, the kind of services of which I have been talking depend far more on people than on buildings. Apart from medical staff, the local authorities employ a small number of psychiatric social workers, and over 1,000 mental welfare officers. Their job rarely attracts public attention, and when it does it is usually the part that they themselves like least—the removal of patients to hospital. But there could not be more humane work than the visiting of the mentally ill, work which is painstaking, slow, but very rewarding. Theirs is, however, a calling

which has not received either the praise or the credit which is its rightful due.
I want to turn now to the hospital services. The demands on our mental hospitals have increased greatly during the last few years, and the admission rate has increased from 59,000 in 1949–37,000 of them being voluntary patients—to 88,000 in 1956, including 69,000 voluntary patients.
Much of this increased hospital work has to be done in buildings which, as we all know, are unsuitable because they are too old, too big, designed for the ideas of another age, and usually in the wrong places—not that any blame attaches to our forbears for that fact. They were acting in a contemporary spirit of enlightenment.
We are now thinking again very seriously as to what type of hospital for the mentally ill or mentally defective we shall need when we are planning for the future, and the Royal Commission's Report will give fresh impetus to our study of this question. Meanwhile, we are doing what we can, by additions and conversions, to bring the old and unsuitable buildings up to date.
Since I was appointed I have been to a good many hospitals, and I think it is marvellous how an energetic hospital management committee can, with a few pots of paint, make some of these rather grim barracks a bit brighter. At least, we are making some progress in overcoming overcrowding, which has been, and still is, such a headache.
Since the peak period about 1953, there has been a decline in the degree of overcrowding in both mental and mental deficiency hospitals.
So much for the buildings—now for the patients. I want to give the House an idea of the changing picture there. I do not want to overwhelm the House, as I have said, with statistics that are particularly complicated and, as the Royal Commission pointed out, not entirely in a satisfactory form, but I can give a general picture of the trend.
Much treatment, and this will apply increasingly in the future, takes place outside the conventional designated hospital. I refer to day hospitals, to the long-stay annexes, hospitals other than designated hospitals where psychiatric treatment is given, and so on.
The number of mentally ill out-patients dealt with in ordinary hospitals has gone up by nearly 50 per cent. since 1949, and the number of domiciliary visits by hospital specialists to such patients has more than trebled in the last seven years, all of which indicates the pattern of development for the future.
The number of voluntary admissions has, as the House knows, been rising steadily over a generation. The number of voluntary patients in residence has also been rising, but not, of course, so fast.
The effect of the increasing rate of voluntary treatment may be beginning to be reflected in the figures concerning certified admissions. Until recently, the number of certified admissions remained fairly constant with a tendency to rise since the war, but during 1955 and 1956 there has been a significant decrease both in the number of certified admissions and in the number of certified patients resident in hospital. Certified admission, which was about 20,000 per annum in 1954, had dropped to 17,500 in 1956, while the number of certified patients resident had dropped from 114,000 at the end of 1954 to 104,000 at the end of 1956.
I am chary of building too much on these figures, but hon. Members may care to look on this significant drop as being a hopeful pointer to the future.
Now I turn to what has been a black spot, and that is the waiting list for admission to mental deficiency hospitals. The waiting list, which was over 7,000 in 1954, is now down to just over 6,000. The Royal Commission's proposal that local authorities rather than hospitals should be responsible in future for providing homes for those who no longer need continual nursing and psychiatric care will, if acted on, have far-reaching effects on the organisation of the hospitals. Indeed, the implications of this recommendation must be one of the chief subjects for discussion in the future.
Now a word about those who have been working under very difficult conditions for so many years in mental and mental deficiency hospitals. I know that the whole House will want to join with me in paying a tribute to all of them for what they have done. Old buildings, overcrowding, the surge of voluntary admissions—all of these have made difficulties for them. Nevertheless, against

this background, it is a miracle to be able to record that the amount of treatment—and successful treatment—which is being carried out has increased out of all measure.
But we still have much to do to fill the gaps in the ranks both of medical and of nursing staff. There is still a serious shortage in psychiatric consultant staff; we are paying the price of the isolation and separation in the past of this branch of medicine. There is, nevertheless, an improvement, I am glad to say. Our general policy is to try to strengthen the medical staff in the senior grades first, and to provide for an increasing number of consultants in the future by increasing and improving the intake to the senior registrar grade. This policy is bearing fruit in that there are now nearly half as many psychiatric consultants again as in 1949, while the number of consultants in all specialities in the hospital service has increased by a little over a quarter.
As to nursing, there is also heartening evidence here of an improvement in the staffing position, particularly shown by the substantial increase last year in the numbers of student mental nurses, which has risen by nearly 20 per cent. This branch of the nursing service has had a long and uphill struggle to overcome the traditional view of their duties, which dates from the days when they were custodians or attendants. All that is gone. Today, the mental nurse is highly regarded as a worthy member of a great profession.
Finally, let me pay a tribute to one group who do not figure in any statistics —the voluntary workers, the Leagues of Friends and the other bodies who do so much to bring life in a hospital as near as possible to ordinary life, and whose work perhaps does more than any single factor to break down prejudice on this subject.
I have tried to give the House some idea of what is happening in the mental health services. I can assure the House that I have shown a self-denying ordinance in the length of my speech. I am only too conscious not of what I have said, but of what I would like to have said, but I wanted to give the House an assurance that there is no question in my Department, or in any sphere of the mental health services, of there being any


stagnation or complacency about present conditions; nor is there any lack of hope for the future.
My generation has seen a revolution in our approach to mental illness; never was a revolution more needed. We, as I see it, are just beginning to reap the benefits of all the new developments there have been in the last generation. It takes time to achieve worthwhile results; and now this very great Report comes to point lines of advance for the future in this difficult sphere of mental health. Difficult it may be, yet there is no field of medical activity in which there is more reason to have hope—hope for the lightening of at least one of the scourges which afflict the human race.

3.54 p.m.

Dr. Edith Summerskill: I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will not regard it as a reflection upon himself when I say that we regret that the Minister of Health himself is not here today. Knowing the interest which the Minister has in this subject, and how he was looking forward to the Report, I should like a message to go from this side of the House, and, indeed, I am sure from the whole House, to the Minister expressing the hope that he will make a rapid recovery.
I should like also to congratulate the whole of the Royal Commission on producing a Report which bears the mark of a painstaking inquiry which has resulted in recommendations which, I believe, when implemented will make history in the field of mental health. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) is not here today, because she played a part on the Commission. My hon. Friend was anxious that she should be acquitted of any discourtesy to the House, but she had a previous longstanding engagement, of which I think the Parliamentary Secretary is aware.
Personally, I am very glad that this was a unanimous Report and that there was not a minority Report. A unanimous Report on a subject of this kind helps to promote constructive criticism, and I am quite sure that all of us in the House this afternoon are anxious to be constructive in whatever criticism we wish to make.
The importance of the matter under discussion can be measured by the fact that about 200,000 of our hospital beds —that is, nearly half the available accommodation in the country—are occupied by patients suffering from some form of nervous disorder, and about one-third of the drugs prescribed in this country by doctors—and often in this House the drug bill is discussed—are for some form of nervous complaint. The sickness and the misery of both the patients and their families is, of course, immeasurable. Therefore, this Report, as the Parliamentary Secretary has said, is of profound significance.
Everyone must welcome the new approach to mental disorder which is contained here, because it emphasises the importance of care rather than custody, and the removal of all formalities of admission. Of course, as the Parliamentary Secretary has implied, while, administratively, this feature of the Report, the removal of all formalities of admission, may be regarded as very important, nevertheless the figures which we have heard this afternoon show that certification has already become outmoded, and we are doing what we always do in our legislation and in our recommendations; we have approached this problem in an empirical manner. We have proved that voluntary admission without certification is highly successful.
I had not previously heard the figures which the Parliamentary Secretary quoted for the last two years. These are, indeed, spectacular. What we have done before we are doing today. We are saying, "We made an experiment a little while ago and we have found it successful. Now we recommend that it should be embodied in future legislation"
The Parliamentary Secretary did not mention the Mapperley Hospital. I think it is mentioned in the Report. The figures relating to that hospital are quite outstanding. On 6th March, out of a total of 1,054 in patients, only one was certified. This is a remarkable advance in the field of mental health. I think that the proposed appeal tribunals and the patient's right to independent examination should present sufficient safeguard for the small minority who harbour a grievance, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds), who has taken such an interest


in the matter, will be satisfied with these figures.
The new terminology and the abolition of the terms "certification" and "mental deficiency" is welcomed as a contribution to removing the stigma which has become attached to these words. Nevertheless, we must not be content simply with changing terminology and with the degree of formality. I am glad there is a psychiatrist on the opposite benches. I am sure that he will agree with me that the right approach is to ensure that psychiatry is integrated more closely into medicine and surgery. I am sure that that is what we should endeavour to do.
I feel that the public is not aware of the modern methods of treatment such as electro-convulsive therapy, insulin treatment, and improvements in psychotherapy which have not only revolutionised our attitude to mental treatment but have, indeed, provided cures for people who, in the past, would have been regarded as hopelessly insane.
While we may have read the Report and while we may, during our debate, support many of the recommendations of the Royal Commission, the general public will be very slow to change its attitude while mental patients are herded in buildings similar, in some respects, to our old prisons, and are served by men and women whose efforts to improve the lives of their patients are hampered by shortage of staff and overcrowded conditions.
The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned this, and I am quite sure that an effort is being made to change these conditions. I am very glad to hear of the recruitment of mental nurses. I always regard the nurse as overworked and under-paid. The nurse is an exploited individual, and we are all guilty of that exploitation of a woman, or man, in this case, who works in a selfless manner in a job which very few of us here would be prepared to undertake.
I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary about sensational publicity. I deplore it. I deplore the fact that, in the twentieth century, the Press has to use sick and helpless people to attract readers. It has highlighted the problems connected with individual patients, but the Press always fails to focus attention on the magnificent service given by the staffs of our mental hospitals. I am, therefore, very glad that, on 4th July, the

Manchester Guardian, in an excellent article on Rampton, went some way to remedy this.
Of course, there is a tendency to get the whole subject out of perspective. The mental patient is a tragic case. If any of us here had the choice to make between being physically afflicted or mentally afflicted, I believe that each one of us would choose physical rather than mental affliction. While every effort must be made, and will be made, to keep these tragic patients in the community, we must, nevertheless, face the fact that the best atmosphere for many thousands of mentally ill and sub-normal persons is that of a hospital, where their condition is understood and where they are cared for by people trained in mental illness who can be relied upon to deal with them sympathetically and wisely.
My experience of mental hospitals was not acquired only as a medical student. I actually did my courting in a mental hospital, where my future husband was a medical officer. For years after my marriage, we revisited the hospital and saw the staff and patients, who regarded us as their friends. I was a very impressionable young woman, and I should like to say that, from those many years during which I was attached to that hospital, I have not a single memory of anyone being detained against his or her will or coming to me and complaining about it. There were the paranoids with a sense of persecution, but my most lasting impression during those years was of the extreme patience and understanding exercised by the staff.
Those who are not closely familiar with these places do not fully understand how dedicated these men and women become. Of course, there is the occasional exception; there always is. But in these hospitals, where the patients rarely have visitors over the years, a community is formed and gradually, the staff become integrated with their helpless family. Often, a nurse is attracted to nursing because of her maternal instinct, and in the mental hospital she can, indeed, express that maternal instinct in a very fine and noble way, because the patients there are, in fact, her helpless charges.
My most recent visit, like that of other hon. Members, was a few months ago, to a mental hospital having over 1,500 patients, which was grossly overcrowded


and under-staffed. The nurses were doing their best in this old, ugly and inadequate building. The shortage of staff meant that hundreds of patients sat apathetically round the walls of the rooms, deprived of individual attention, with an inevitable deterioration in their minds. It was not the fault of the staff; they were doing their very best, but there were not enough of them to give the individual attention necessary.
I come now to the position of the local authorities. I hope that every member of a local authority will read paragraph 87, in page 28 of the Report, where the Commission says:
… mental health in its widest sense embraces the whole field of human relationships and human behaviour, and many forms of mental disorder are evidenced by, and often arise from, disturbance in a person's relationship with other individual human beings or with the society in which he lives
This is, indeed, a new approach to mental health. I hope that the public will learn all about this Report, for, at long last, it is learning that much in mental health is related to the patient's relationship with the community and with individuals. It is in social relationships that a very great deal of preventive work can be successfully done.
I should like to pay my tribute to the excellent work of the psychiatric social workers. I wish that, when the school's career mistress is advising girls what to do, she might have her attention directed to the important work done by the psychiatric social worker, who goes into the homes of people and discovers just where the stress or tension is, whether in the family or outside, and who can obtain the patient's confidence, the patient being relieved, perhaps for the first time, of much pent-up emotion. I believe that the psychiatric social worker is performing a most important function in our social services.
In bringing in the local authorities, we should, at last, be departing from the old conception of institutional treatment of mental illness. While benefiting the patient, of course, such an arrangement would give the local authorities much welfare work to do, work which they were deprived of in 1948. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us, not now, but later perhaps, more about the practical side of this matter. Will the ratepayers be prepared to play their part

in this important social development? We all know that the clinics, whatever we like to call them, the workshops, and so forth, which will be needed for this particular category of patient, will be expensive. I should like to have some assurance about the financing of this part of the service.
I come now to what I regard as the most important medical aspect of the Report. I assure the House that I have no desire to be destructive in my criticism, but any real criticism which I have relates to this part of the Report. It is suggested that three categories of mental disorder are to be recognised—mental illness, severe subnormality, and the psychopath. The psychopath is to be offered treatment or, in certain circumstances, compulsorily admitted to hospital. The Report devotes a considerable amount of space to this matter, because it is an entirely different approach to a very difficult problem. No one can quarrel with the principle—I am not quarrelling with it—but how is it to be put into practice?
In paragraph 357, the Royal Commission says:
We have considered whether the law should attempt to define or describe psychopathic personality more precisely as a guide to the doctors who are called on to make the diagnosis. In our opinion it would do much more harm than good to try to include in the law a definition of psychopathic personality on the analogy of the present legal definition of mental defectiveness
I find it difficult to agree with that. In fact, I regard it as the weakness m the Report. It is said with some humour that a psychopath is anyone that a psychiatrist does not like. Perhaps only one with a psychiatric mind can appreciate the humour in that. The fact is that the judgment of who is a psychopath is subjective and not objective. It is determined in part by certain conventions recognised in the society of the doctor and the patient.
Perhaps I may give an example of what comes to my mind as I look at the windows, although I know that in this House one is not expected to draw attention to anything which is not in the Chamber. The windows above once had a grill in front of them. Let us imagine what might have happened in those days had this recommendation been implemented and it was necessary to decide what should be the future destiny of an individual who might have been arrested. Imagine that a woman who had been


brought up in a comfortable home had decided, because she felt strongly about the suffrage movement, to go out of her home, to fight with policemen and to undergo forcible feeding again and again. In the light of all this, it might have been possible for a psychiatrist, who himself, perhaps, had certain emotions and certain views on feminism, to say, "For a woman with that background to do this, there may be a streak of subnormality" That is an example of what might happen in the past.
I might say that many of those women who underwent that fearful fight in the suffrage world are now very normal elderly ladies whom I occasionally see and who show no sign of mental disorder. Nevertheless, to illustrate my point, it might be possible that a psychiatrist would say that there might be a streak of abnormality in one of these women. If the psychiatrist is uncertain whether an individual has a psychopathic personality, how will a prison medical officer and a general practitioner always be certain of making accurate diagnosis?
I have said that I am always averse to destructive criticism and, therefore, I have tried to inform myself on this subject. It was an English physician, Dr. J. C. Pritchard, of Bristol, who in 1835 described what we have now come to recognise as a psychopathic personality, but it was in a lecture by Dr. D. K. Henderson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh, twenty years ago, that I came across what I consider to be the best description. I should have liked to see something like this included in the Report.
Dr. Henderson describes psychopaths as
those individuals who conform to a certain intellectual standard, sometimes high, sometimes approaching the realm of defect but not yet amounting to it, who, throughout their lives or from a comparatively early age, have exhibited disorders of conduct of an anti-social or asocial nature, usually of a recurrent or episodic type, which, in many instances, have proved difficult to influence by methods of social, penal and medical care …
It is difficult to believe that a wide definition of that nature could create controversy in the psychiatric world. The Commission recognised the importance of this matter and the dangers involved in a wrong diagnosis and the Commission itself spoke of the need of safeguards. Of course, it is important to introduce

safeguards, for an error of judgment might infringe the liberty of the subject. It is of primary importance in this House to protect the liberty of the subject.
Again, if I may indulge in a little fancy, suppose that in this country there were a calamity and we had a near-Fascist Government, legislation of this kind was on the Statute Book and it was possible for it to operate in such a way that an individual could be compulsorily detained. It is for this reason that I speak so strongly. My feeling that civil liberties should be maintained is such that I would prefer many psychopaths to escape rather than that one individual should be deprived of his civil liberty.
Again, who can be certain of recognising the dividing line between extreme eccentricity and some pathological deviation? The example which I have given of the dedicated suffragette might be considered apt. Some might regard her as being extremely eccentric. Others might say that she had a pathological streak. Who is to say exactly who is right?
The very fact that we now propose officially to recognise a category of mental disorders which, hitherto, has tended to baffle authority is a reason for a wide definition which is comprehensible by an intelligent person. There are still many who are reluctant to recognise the special needs of the psychopath. I refer not only to the man in the street, but to judges and to doctors, for example. Many of them may be highly sceptical regarding the reality of such a state. Indeed, some learned judges, I believe, are a little suspicious of psychiatrists whenever they give evidence. They have a feeling that a psychiatrist is endeavouring to divert the course of justice.
It was the great English psychiatrist Maudsley who said that many people regarded moral insanity as an "unfounded medical invention", as a most dangerous medical doctrine, but that he himself was convinced that such a condition really existed. Now, I am glad to say, many prison officials and many judges are beginning to appreciate that those who are so afflicted are distinctive types, emotionally and instinctively unstable, who have no more power to control their conduct than the epileptic can control his fit. It seems to me that the whole problem of psychopathy is not tackled


with the necessary conviction and firmness, considering the huge numbers of people involved not only in this country but in countries like the United States of America, who are also faced with this problem.
One thing that I find it difficult to understand is why educationists do not teach their children, just as a beginging, the importance of habit to happy living. It is the new approach to the psychopath—indeed, the official recognition of his condition—to which I attach the greatest importance in the Report and which will come to be regarded as another step forward in the evolution of our civilisation.

4.20 p.m.

Mr. Walter Elliot: The House has only a short time to discuss this most important subject, and we are greatly indebted to the Parliamentary Secretary for the miracle of compression which he achieved in his review of this tremendous document. It may be that our debate may be interrupted halfway through by a Bill of great merit no doubt but of negligible importance compared to the subject we are now discussing. It behoves all of us, therefore, to do our best to emulate my hon. Friend's example of compression, and I shall confine myself to one aspect only of this problem.
The figures which the Parliamentary Secretary gave, and, indeed, with which we are familiar, and to which the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) referred, are not, I think, sufficiently appreciated by the public; that is to say, the size of this problem is not sufficiently appreciated. Half of our hospital population is of people suffering mental and not physical illness. Consider the amount of time and thought given to the other half of the sick population compared with the time and thought which are devoted to this 50 per cent. of the whole hospital population.
I think that in this debate we can well go a little wider than the Report of the Royal Commission was able to go, because the Royal Commission, by its terms of reference, was limited to the existing law and administrative machinery. But this is the only opportunity we

have of discussing the wider subject, and I think we should take advantage of it.
Even the attempt at definition to which the right hon. Lady referred still remains far from satisfactory. The right hon. Lady said such definitions might be subject to bias against a person disapproved of by the psychiatrist.
I was glad to hear the tribute which the right hon. Lady paid to the great Medical School in Edinburgh, but I do not feel that even Professor Henderson's definition is one to which I should like to entrust my own liberties suppose I found myself brought before either an extreme Fascist or extreme Communist tribunal. I might be held by either of them to have indulged in "anti-social or asocial" activities, which they might say have not been possible to get rid of by social or even penal pressures.
The lack of integration of this subject into the general sphere of medicine has produced this effect, namely, that research into this subject is of a minimal nature compared with the amount devoted to the physical make up of the individual. The normal work of the great medical schools in physiology and bacteriology naturally and inevitably considers the physical make-up of the human being. The mental make-up of the human being is very seldom considered at all.
I do not mean only of the abnormal human being. I should like a little more work to be done upon the mental makeup of the normal human being, upon the normal activities, the normal working, of this extraordinary machinery which entitles us to the proud but sometimes, I think, inaccurate description of homo sapiens. I think that homo robustus would be a good name for the human race. Whether we are entitled to the description sapiens, I am not quite certain. We have all these remedies, all these powerful treatments now being applied to abnormal persons. Yet we have practically all of their effect as applied to normal persons.
The brain runs, it may be surprising to the layman to hear, on sugar. Sugar is what our minds work upon. Sugar is the food of thought. It is given a more technical name, carbohydrate; but sugar is the name more easily understood by the ordinary man or woman. The sugar metabolism of the brain is a thing about which we know very little.


No ambitious student starts research which may lead him into an investigation of mental processes, because there is no future in that. The great Chairs, the great research scholarships, are held by people investigating the physical makeup and the results of physical impacts on the body, and not by those who are investigating the results of physical changes on the mind. There is not enough; there is not 2 per cent, of research expenditure in this country which is applied to these mental questions.
We must cut at the root of the number of admissions to hospitals. All these administrative proposals we are discussing for painting, improving or brightening the hospitals will not get at the original causes, and it is getting at those which alone will enable us to reduce the impact of mental illness; which will bring about, and could bring about, reductions in mental illnesses, possibly comparable with the reductions in the zymotic diseases which have been carried out—reductions in such things as typhoid fever; or the wonderful reduction which we have seen in recent times in tuberculosis.
Great advances have been made. Now we even find tuberculosis beds vacant, whereas only a little whole ago there were more sufferers from these diseases than there were beds for them, so that there were long waiting lists. That in turn has had an effect upon the attitude of the public and the patients. It is the possibility of cure which leads patients to flock to treatment and flock towards hospitals. It is the possibility of cure which impels their relatives to induce them to go for treatment rather than fear it. The treatment of a disease, fortunately almost unknown in this country, but a scourge of the human race outside it, leprosy, up to a little while ago was a matter almost of penal settlements—of guards, of convict conditions. Now, owing to the existence of curative treatment, it is a case of the patient seeking the doctor rather than of the warder seeking the patient.
That attitude is what we must attempt to secure in this other great branch of medicine. Therefore, I would say that we must press very strongly for considerably more attention to be given to research into the problems of the normal working of the mind. Then, it may be,

we shall find that we throw light on the abnormal working of the mind. Eminent people, the Huxleys and others, write hooks about the extraordinary effect of slight doses of recognised drugs such as mescalin. I read that description of Huxley's looking at a pair of flannel trousers and of how he felt that for the first time he really understood the inner meaning of a pair of flannel trousers—the result of a slight change, effected by a dose of mescalin, in the circulation of his blood, some slight change in the fluids which were circulating through and nourishing his nerve centres—those nerve centres of ours on which we rely for our judgments.
I am sure that the difficulty of the beginning of confident and successful treatment of mental abnormality is that we do not know about the normal. Where is the result of a thousand volunteers having accepted the administration of a tiny dose of insulin to see what the effect of doses of insulin are on the normal man? We must know that before we use successfully these massive doses which in some cases produce magical results but, in some, do not.
There is another phenomenon which might be investigated which is very familiar to all of us, and particularly to Mr. Speaker and to Mr. Deputy-Speaker. That is the sudden onset of sleep. What is this extraordinary phenomenon from which we have all suffered? We have all found ourselves nodding even in conditions of danger, as, for instance, when driving a car. We have seen the tragic result of that recently in London. It is described as a "blackout," a metaphor, a term taken from the theatre. We know nothing about this extraordinary fact that a person suddenly finds himself nodding, passing into a coma, in which he may do some very dangerous things, such as neglecting to attend to the steering of a motor car. Those who have experienced that extremely unpleasant feeling know how suddenly and apparently inexplicably it can come on.
This is another example of the extraordinary lack of knowledge of the working of the normal brain. Therefore I would say that we have, first of all, to do our best on a wide basis to try to establish some norms, some criteria of normality, some purely physical criteria of normality which even a court, unless it


definitely went against the recorded investigations of science and medicine, would not be able to neglect.
Naturally, all of us would wish to discourse further on this extremely interesting and important subject; all the more for Scottish Members in that the Percy Report mentioned that it had under its review the Scottish Command Paper No. 9623, which was brought out as long ago as 1955, but upon which it has not yet been found possible to take action. The Percy Report goes much further in bringing out the wide and far-reaching administrative problems which, in view of the time, I shall not broach at all, except to say that on the administrative side I think there is a great danger of handing too much over to the local authorities before they have been, so to speak, graded up to a point where they can take these matters over.
Certainly I am sure of this, that the research that is necessary can be done only from the centre. Research on the scale which I envisage should be undertaken is really the responsibility of the Lord President of the Council; it is not the responsibility even of either of the Departments of Health. I am sure that both the Scottish and English Health Departments will not be able to go wide enough in their researches, and certainly the local authorities, as such, will be totally incapable of dealing with the problems, the mere physical questions and the ancillary conditions brought out by the Report.
Therefore, I say, like the Parliamentary Secretary, not at all because of my lack of interest in the subject, but merely because of my desire that the House of Commons should have the opportunity of discussing this in the widest field, I welcome this Report, with the highest congratulations for its authors and particularly its distinguished Chairman, Lord Percy of Newcastle, a colleague of mine long ago as a Parliamentary Secretary in the Department of Health. It may be an encouragement to the Parliamentary Secretary to recollect that this Report comes from the pen of one who formerly occupied the position which he at present adorns.
There is, undoubtedly, a great deal to be done in administrative work, and even

more in the legislative field. But the root of the whole thing lies in a further and better understanding of the problems that we are tackling, the problems of the abnormal mind and further knowledge of the working of the normal mind itself.

4.35 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Mayhew: I think that many of the remarks of the right hon. Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Walter Elliot) will have won the support of both sides of the House. His speech, if I may say so, seems to be the product of a well-sugared mind. One of the remarks which he made and which, I think, attracted many of us, was when he regretted that this debate would shortly be interrupted by other business.
This is, I believe, the second general mental health debate that there has been in this House in the last twenty-seven years and it seems a pity that on this occasion—this big occasion, so far as this subject is concerned—we should be restricted to three or four hours, for increasingly this problem has emerged as our greatest social problem.
One of the weaknesses of the Royal Commission's Report—and the Parliamentary Secretary mentioned it, in passing—is the statistical weakness. That is not the fault of the authors' of the Report, but it is a fact that on this subject it is difficult to get a full view of the scope of the problem because of the statistical deficiencies, which, I suppose, are the Minister's responsibility.
I should like to know very much more precisely the scale of this problem and the trends—to what extent certain illnesses are increasing and others decreasing. I should like international comparisons. I should like to know the state of mental illnesses in this country compared with other countries and their approach compared with ours.
Nevertheless, I have tried, with the limited figures and facts available, to work out precisely how many mentally disordered people there are in this country in touch with the mental health service at some point or other.
We have already had quoted the figure of 200,000 in-patients in our mental and mental deficiency hospitals. To these we must add something for out-patients, and I suppose that the nearest approach that


we can get to this is the figure for 1955, quoted in the Royal Commission's Report, for the first approaches made to outpatients' clinics in that year. That number was 122,000.
Then we must add those who are mentally deficient, and under supervision or guardianship or on licence from mental deficiency hospitals. That figure would come to about 100,000. All told, it seems probable that there are about 450,000 mentally disordered people in this country at present in touch with our mental health service at some point or other.
An that is not the end of the story, unfortunately, because there are scores, perhaps hundreds and thousands, of mentally disordered people who are not in touch with our mental health service today. Some of them may have been discharged from hospital "improved" but not recovered. Others may have applied for out-patient treatment and have given it up. A large number, judging from the correspondence I get, will have been fobbed off by their local G.P. either because he is so desperately busy that he cannot cope with them, or because he simply does not understand the problems of mentally disordered people.
I would say how surprised I am to find how many people have written to me, and probably to other hon. Members, complaining that they have approached their G.P. with their mental problems and had been dismissed with instructions about "pulling themselves together", which have not been helpful and constructive. I am not blaming G.P.s altogether, because this is such a vast problem, and they are often desperately busy.
Finally, there is a category of mentally ill people who do not approach the National Health Service because they are ashamed to do so, or because they do not realise that there is treatment which they can have and which would be helpful to them.
Moreover, quite apart from the number of people involved, which is tremendous, the repercussions of this great problem on all spheres of social life are tremendous. Each one of these mentally ill people is a source of tragedy to a family, to a husband or a child. The other, less human, consequences are also appalling. One has only to look at the matter from the very much lower point of view of the cost to the national

economy. The cost of our hospitals and of sickness benefit and loss of wages come to about £200 million a year.
When all the factors that I have mentioned are added together, the question of mental disorder—a useful phrase which the Royal Commission has recommended—mental illness and mental deficiency is rapidly emerging as the greatest social problem in the country at the present time.
It is disappointing to see the strange disproportion of effort which the House of Commons applies to this question. One has only to look at the index of HANSARD to see an extraordinary disproportion of time taken on other no doubt worthwhile but far less important questions compared with this question of mental health. Last week, for instance, we discussed Purchase Tax on musical instruments again. It comes up year after year. It is in the Finance Bill and we have to vote on it. We cannot even pair when that gigantic subject comes up, but mental illness has been discussed only twice in the last twenty-seven years.
This is a case where we Members have a duty, because advance in this subject comes through informed public opinion. Speaking from my personal experience, I would say that our constituents are rather shy of coming to us on questions of mental illness and mental deficiency. Many electors are happy to stand up at Election meetings and complain of rising rents, or something of that kind, but they are ashamed to stand up and complain of conditions in local mental hospitals, most of all if they or a member of their family have been patients there. Therefore, we Members may unconsciously tend to under-rate the amount of suffering caused to our constituents by this problem. It has been only since I have become known as being interested in the subject that large numbers of my constituents have come to me on questions of mental health.
We hope that the Royal Commission's Report will change the position, as it is changing already. Whatever criticism will be made, I do not think that anyone has said or will say that the Report is not the work of humane and enlightened people battling with a difficult and complicated problem. Most of the recommendations are warmly and generally welcomed. There is the removal of emphasis on detention and the increased


emphasis on treatment and on the review tribunals, which are very much needed, not necessarily because injustice is being done on review but because it is not plainly seen by patients or relatives that it is done.
One of the great advantages of the review tribunals will be that not only will fairness be done but everyone will agree that it is being done. That is important in these delicate and difficult matters in which people's feelings are so vitally involved. Equally, the wide increase of activity on the part of local authorities is generally accepted and the idea that their duty should be a positive duty and not merely permissive. The change in terminology is also welcomed.
The controversial point which my right hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) mentioned is the one about the treatment of psychopaths. I find this whole question extremely complicated and, even when one has sorted it out, extremely difficult to judge. I can understand those who object to the Commission's recommendation on compulsory detention of psychopaths. What it comes down to is, plainly, that if we carry out the recommendations we shall create a new legal right to detain people—sometimes of high intelligence—who have committed no crime. That is the essential point. It is true that we can detain those over 21 for only one month, but those under 21 can be detained for a long period and we can detain them even though they would not be certifiable under existing legislation.
As my right hon. Friend pointed out, this raises the difficult question of definition, but I am inclined to agree with the right hon. Member for Kelvingrove against my right hon. Friend on this. I feel that the definition which my right hon. Friend read did not really solve the problem. I would not even say that there were absolutely no suffragettes who would not fall within that definition. One has the same problem of justice and equity in applying that definition as in leaving "psychopath" to mean what it means to psychiatrists and doctors in this country, bearing in mind that all these people who are compulsorily detained have review tribunal rights.
It should be borne in mind, particullarly, that if we carried out the recommendations we would be changing the

form and the law but not really changing the practice as much as many hon. Members might think. Already, the law is being stretched and strained to such an extent that many of these psychopaths who would fall under certifiability under these new recommendations are already certified by stretching the present legal position.
This is a matter which needs looking into and changing, but we should be wrong to think that if we accepted the recommendations of the Royal Commission we should necessarily, in practice, be giving greater powers to the Government, to doctors or to health authorities than they have already. It is very welcome that the Commission should have drawn attention to the position, which is unsatisfactory, and I think that, on balance, its recommendation may prove to be right. It really applies only to people aged from 17 to 21, because over 21 it is only a matter of one month's detention for treatment.
Under 17, a young person is already under the Children and Young Persons Acts. Therefore, it is only in the category of people between 17 and 21 that the civil liberties issue arises, and these are the ages in which treatment is most effective. Frankly, I feel less inhibition on restricting the civil liberty of young persons under 21 for their own good, for their training and health, than I should ever feel about an adult. We need to look at this matter from the point of view of the real future welfare of the psychopath of under 21. Though I am open to persuasion on this difficult question, I think that there is a lot to be said for the Commission's point of view.
I was glad that the right hon. Member for Kelvingrove drew attention to another very important fact. It would be a great pity if, as a result of this Report, undue emphasis was laid on the merely legal aspect of this vast problem of mental health. There is a danger that in its efforts to get rid of the stigma and put the treatment of mental illness in a proper perspective as part of the general Health Service of the country, the Commission's Report, by leading to constant debate on this narrow legal question of compulsion and certifiability, may distract public attention from other problems which, I agree entirely with the right hon. Gentleman, are even more important.
There are four major fields in which advance is needed. There is the field of legal reform, which is fully covered by the Report of the Royal Commission, and we hope that the Government will make rapid progress in the next Session in dealing with that. Then there is the great need of community care, touched on in the Report, which is of vast importance. Then there are the conditions in the mental hospitals, where great advances are necessary. Finally, there is the question of research.
I hope that we shall not get bogged down in the first field of activity and let others go. Particularly let us avoid, by small disagreements on the question of the psychopath, any suggestion that there is not a vast body of general agreement in the House on the recommendations of the Royal Commission.
I have said that there are four fields because the Report tends to suggest that the stigma of mental illness arises out of the legal position and out of the terminology. That is not so. It is wrong to think that if we change the law and the terminology we shall have done anything substantial to remove what stigma remains in mental illness. To my mind, it is putting the cart before the horse. The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned the word "asylum". I think he agrees with me that it is not the word "asylum" which puts the stigma into mental illness, but that it is our attitude to mental illness which puts the stigma on the word "asylum".
We can call mental defectives subnormal personalities, but it makes no difference whatever if there then attaches to the phrase "subnormal personality" the same stigma that tended to attach to the old terminology. I think, therefore, we should realise that if we want to destroy the stigma of mental illness, we must advance in all the four fields mentioned and not deal solely with the narrow question covered by the Report.
In the field of community care we have a great opportunity to lessen the stigma by destroying the isolation of mental illness from the rest of the community, by bridging and narrowing the gulf separating the mentally ill, in their remote, vast hospitals, from the rest of the community. By the various forms of halfway house outlined in the Report we can become familiar with the problem

of mentally ill people. On the whole, that would be a good thing. Some months ago, for the purpose of some broadcasts, I spent a few days in one of the wards of a mental hospital. As I went in I felt a certain apprehension, but after a few hours—hon. Members will not misunderstand me—I felt completely at home.
I feel, therefore, that the solution to the problem of the stigma is to come closer to it rather than to go farther from it. This enables one to see the mentally ill and the healthy disordered not as a vast and rather forbidding army, but as individual people; as somebody's wife, as a railwayman, as a clerk, as a professional man. In this way one gets insight into their problems, and with that insight comes the wish to try to help them and to do something about the problem. So, if we advance in the field of community care, that will be one more attack upon the stigma.
As my right hon. Friend said, perhaps the greatest support of the stigma is the spectacle of some of our vast and ugly and over-crowded hospital wards. We must get rid of that. I am referring not only to the actual size of the wards and the conditions in them, but to the amount of medical treatment given to the patient. There is one mental hospital in Warwickshire where the weekly cost of the mental treatment per patient is 2s. 2d. This means that those patients are not getting treatment of any effectiveness. That again, is an important problem which must be tackled.
Finally, we come to the point about research, mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman. As he rightly said, it is no use painting up what exists, we must cut at the root of the problem of mental illness. Nothing would do more to remove the stigma than a steady stream of people coming out of our mental hospitals, people once seriously mentally ill, now normal. Such people talking about it is the finest possible way to remove the stigma.
If we became mentally ill we would worry about the conditions in the mental hospital; we would worry on the issue of civil liberty, but the one thing we would pray for, above all, would be to have the best possible treatment and to be cured. That is where all the emphasis should be placed. We are not putting the necessary


emphasis on research in this country. It is true that advance has been made not only here, but in other countries. Some great mental illnesses have been suppressed altogether, for instance, general paralysis of the insane. Research and treatment have removed it from the list of the worst mental illnesses. New techniques are developing but the position is not yet satisfactory.
A few weeks ago, in a Question to the Minister, I asked how much money is spent on research into mental health in this country. The right hon. Gentleman replied:
Expenditure by the Medical Research Council on research into mental illness during the year 1957–58 is estimated at approximately £55.000."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th March, 1957, Vol. 567, c. 800.]
It is true that there are some other small sources of funds, but £55,000 spent on research on a problem which, on my reckoning, is costing the country £200 million a year is inadequate.

Mr. R. W. Sorensen: Does that figure include the research which is going on in some small mental hospitals?

Mr. Mayhew: No, as I said, there are certain other sources of funds and I will come to that later. There is also the Mental Health Research Fund which, with small resources, is doing the best it can in this respect.
On the specific illness of schizophrenia, I asked the Minister how many hospital beds are now occupied by patients suffering from it. His Answer was, 54,179 patients. That figure makes it the worst mental illness in the country, both in its spread, and by reason of the terrible nature of the disease. When I asked what research is being done into it, the Minister replied that the average over the last five years had been £7,500, and that last year it was £11,000.
That is a disgrace. In my view it is scandalous that we are not putting more drive behind this research. The defence put up is that there are not enough ideas, that there is not enough talent. That is not good enough. New ideas and new talent do not grow in a vacuum. We need to create a climate in which young men will choose mental health research as their career. We need to provide fellowships and scholarships at the universities, and

these are not being provided now. We need to insist that our medical students, before becoming G.P.s, should study psychiatry. Today, they do not even have to pass an examination in psychiatry, yet they are examined in skin diseases. So, unless we create the climate, we will not get the talent and the ideas, and at present there is neither the necessary drive nor the essential money for tackling the problem of mental health by research.
The Parliamentary Secretary himself advanced one or two ideas as to the direction of research. So did the right hon. Gentleman, who mentioned mescolin, which I myself have taken for experimental purposes in this connection. I have made a study of it and I am certain that it is a promising line of research. I am sorry to have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that the two men who were the pioneers in this vital new means of research into schizophrenia have met discouragement in their research projects in this country. One has gone to America and the other is in the process of leaving for that country.
One cannot help feeling, therefore, that there is not the necessary drive here, and that if schizophrenia were only infectious, like polio, we would have had behind the research into it, the same money, the same drive, the same talent, the same ideas as we get behind research into polio. Maybe we would have had some of the same magnificent results that we have had in treating polio, though mental illness is a particularly difficult field for research.
I am not really blaming the Government for these matters. Frankly, I believe that all political parties are to blame for not giving enough priority to the subject of mental illness in past years. I think that the Press is much to blame. There is seldom a sensible, constructive article in the Press. When mental illness and mental deficiency are mentioned, it is always in a sensational context, connected with sex or violence, in some way or another. I also think that the medical profession is a little to blame for isolating mental illness and mental deficiency and allowing them to be so isolated from the general body of medical practice, and to that extent losing priority.
The Royal Commission's Report should be a great landmark, a great turning point. It has come at just the right


time. It has wide support in the country. I hope very much that it will be regarded by the Government not necessarily just as a signal for carrying out the recommendations in the narrow field covered by the terms of reference. I hope that the Government will regard it as a signal for attacking this giant social problem over the whole field.

5.2 p.m.

Mr. R. H. Turton: The hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) is a very attractive speaker to follow because he opens up so many vistas for argument. I am determined to resist that attraction. I am certain that the debate should be conducted by as many speakers as possible and that we should confine ourselves to very short speeches.
Having for some while watched for the Report of the Royal Commission with eagerness and at times a little impatience, I felt that I should like to express my personal gratitude to Lord Percy not only for the contents of the Report but for the method of presentation. The Report is presented admirably. There may be parts of it with which we do not agree, but one can find in three different sections of the Report exactly what the Royal Commission has to say, in the early summary, in the body of the Report and in the summaries to each chapter, which is a very great advantage.
The main impression which I have received from the Report—it confirms one that I formed earlier—is that the law relating to mental health and mental deficiency is as out-of-date as the buildings which house the patients. There is urgent need for the House to modernise both the law and the buildings.
In this modernisation, we must do all we can to break down the division between mental and other hospitals. Some of the stigma to which the hon. Member for Woolwich, East referred was not derived from a legal definition but came from the separation of mental treatment from other treatment. When I was spending a certain amount of time visiting mental hospitals and mental deficiency hospitals, I formed the conviction that there were very many patients in those hospitals who, with advantage to themselves and the community, could be accommodated elsewhere.
I have read with care the parts of the Report which deal with that subject. The Report expresses a slightly different view from mine on certain matters—the Royal Commission may be right, or I may be right—but in the end we are agreed that what is wanted is not treatment in a hospital alone but more and more community care. By "community care" is meant that people who now have to be accommodated in hospitals will be accommodated outside.
All this is especially true in respect of old people. Recently, I was able to compare an old people's home in Berlin with old people's homes in this country. I noticed that in the old people's home in Berlin people who had their mental faculties as well as their physical faculties impaired could be accommodated. I feel that we should do a great deal to get the old people who are in mental hospitals into much smaller communities. I do not believe the large institutions are good for them.
I am in general agreement with the recommendations in the Report. In particular, I am sure that the time has come to do away with the Board of Control. It has done good work in the past, but with the changes in the law which are required and with the different conception of the method of treating mental disorder, it being looked upon as something which is medical and requires curative rather than custodial treatment, I feel that the time has come for the Board of Control to go.
My main disagreement with the Report arises on the question of discharge, which is dealt with in paragraph 421, in which the Royal Commission recommends that the power to discharge the patient from hospital should be in the hands of the patient's nearest relative, the medical superintendent of the hospital, any three members of the hospital management committee or board of governors and the Minister of Health.
I take the view that it is wrong to make the Minister of Health the final arbiter in a matter which affects the liberty of the subject. Let us see exactly what might be the case. If the Minister were asked to discharge a patient, it would mean that the medical superintendent had advised against it. Thus, the Minister could recommend a discharge only in a case where the medical superintendent, an


officer appointed by the regional hospital board, which had been appointed by the Minister, had advised against it. It would also be in a case where the patient's nearest relative had thought that the patient should not be discharged. The same argument would apply in respect of the members of the hospital management committee.
I do not believe that it would be in the interests of the patient to have the power to discharge in the hands of the Minister. I do not think that such a power would be exercised very frequently, but I think it is wrong for it to lie there. I feel that the final arbiter should be a judicial authority, and I would recommend either the commissioners mentioned in Chapter 11 of the Report or a county court judge or a judge in chambers. At all events, it is vital that the liberty of the subject should, in the end, depend upon a judicial authority and not upon a Minister looking after the administration of health.
The mental health review tribunals are an excellent idea, but I hope that the Government will not follow the suggestion made in paragraph 447 that the clerk to the tribunal should be a regional officer of a central department or an officer of a regional hospital board. We know quite well that the average citizen looks upon a tribunal of any kind very much in the light of where its office is. Here we are dealing with an appeal against a decision of a medical superintendent in a hospital appointed by a regional hospital board. Consequently, the officers of the tribunal should not come from the office of the regional hospital board. The office and the officer should be judicial in character and not administrative. In other words, if there has to be an office, it should be that of the local clerk to the magistrates or the county court judge. That does not mean that I do not agree that there should be on the tribunal medical representatives and representatives of the hosiptal management committees as well as legal representatives. It is the office which ought clearly to be judicial, because we are here dealing with an appeal.
I promised to be brief and I will therefore cut the rest of what I wanted to say. I trust that the Parliamentary Secretary, the Leader of the House and the Minister. whose absence today we regret

so much, will note that this is a matter for urgent decision. I know that it is complicated, but the great difficulty is that a Royal Commission has made very far-reaching recommendations for reform, and unless the Government take early action, there will be lack of confidence in the administration.
It is very difficult for the Board of Control to continue in operation for long when the Royal Commission has recommended that it should be superseded. That also goes for many other of the Commission's recommendations. I hope that the Government will bear in mind that in the Commission's view many of its recommendations can be carried out without amending legislation. I hope that they also realise that those which require amending legislation should be incorporated in a Bill to deal with this subject introduced at an early date, subject to the need for time for preparation. Matters affecting the health of the nation and the liberty of the subject brook no delay.

5.11 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Robinson: The temptation to range over the whole of this subject, which to me is a very fascinating one, is almost irresistible, but I propose to try to emulate the example of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) and to direct my remarks to the Report itself and to speak briefly. On the whole, it is a most admirable and enlightened Report and I join in the congratulations to the members of the Royal Commission on the attention which they have given to the subject.
I want to take up the right hon. Gentleman on one point, the only one on which I disagreed with him. That was his objection to the Minister of Health being a final discharging authority in this matter. The right hon. Gentleman said that where the liberty of the subject was concerned it was inappropriate that the Minister should be responsible. It is appropriate for that very reason that a Minister should have responsibility, because a Minister is responsible to the House. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the Board of Control is a somewhat maligned body and one which has done a good job; but one of its great weaknesses is that it is not directly answerable to the House on matters of


civil liberty. I join issue with the right hon. Gentleman on that matter.
It is necessary to skate very briefly over those aspects of the Report, which constitute the great bulk of it, with which I am in agreement. Of course, we are all glad that compulsory powers are to be reduced to an absolute minimum and that safeguards against — I will not say improper detention because that is an unhappy phrase— unnecessary detention are to be increased to the maximum. I am also glad that the responsibility for the exercise of compulsory powers is to lie on the shoulders of the medical profession, and that one of the two doctors concerned is to be a psychiatrist.
I imagine— perhaps the Leader of the House can confirm this—that normally it will be the patient's own general practitioner and the medical superintendent of the hospital to which he is taken who will be the people to recommend treatment against his will, if he is not a voluntary patient. I have never set a great deal of store on the value of a magistrate's signature as a safeguard against wrong certification. It has had the effect in the past of making certification something of a judicial process and has added to the stigma which attaches to certification in the mind of the public.
I have one or two doubts about the Commission's recommendations on compulsory admission. The Commission recommended as a corollary to admission to hospitals being as informal as possible that mental hospitals should no longer be ordered to receive a patient. I can well see the motives which led the Royal Commission to make that recommendation, which is obviously intended in the patient's own interests. But the Commission says in paragraph 383 of the Report:
We do not wish to encourage psychiatric hospitals to refuse to admit patients because they may be difficult and awkward to treat, nor to turn away any patient who urgently needs treatment which they can provide.
However, enactment of that recommendation might lead to just that. When the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister come to consider legislation I hope they will think about whether it is quite safe to give hospitals the right to turn away patients who urgently need treatment. We know that in general hospitals there have been unfortunate consequences of hospital after hospital

turning away patients needing treatment. I should not like to see that extended to mental hospitals.
We all approve the arrangements for the voluntary care of what used to be known as mental defectives. I approve of that as strongly as I disapprove of the title "severely sub-normal personality." I do not think that that title will become accepted and I believe that something will take its place. I hope that that matter is given thought before the Bill is drafted. The Royal Commission was surely a little glib in its assumption that it was possible for mental defectives under existing law to be taken in voluntarily for care and treatment. I question that. It is something which has never been decided in the courts and legal opinions differ on whether it is possible. It might be considered all right if the Ministry were now to issue a circular to all hospital authorities recommending that in fuure they should admit defectives to mental deficiency hospitals without certification.
I agree very largely with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) said about psychopaths. It is a pity that the Royal Commission was unable to agree on a definition. Having been unable to agree on a definition of a psychopath, it was an even greater pity that they made a virtue of their failure and said that no definition should be included in the law. That leaves the matter far too wide open, because it is not only psychiatrists who have to decide who are psychopaths and who are not, but also in some cases the courts, and without any guidance from legislation, that may lead to undesirably wide variations in practice in different parts of the country.
My right hon. Friend quoted Professor Henderson's definition, but I think that we can do better than that.

Dr. Summerskill: Try.

Mr. Robinson: I will have a talk with my right hon. Friend afterwards, because I am trying to be brief. It is not an easy task, but some definition must in my view be found.
I welcome very much the fact that the Commission had the courage to tackle the whole topic of psychopaths and I hope


that these incidental difficulties of translating the recommendations into legislative form will not discourage the Minister from going ahead. I hope that he will not use these difficulties as an excuse for saying, "We are not ready to do this yet; let us drop it; it is too hot to handle for the moment." It is most important that we should now take legal powers to deal with the psychopath as such.
On the question of community services, and this is perhaps the most important aspect of the Royal Commission's Report, all that it does, in effect, is to say that what local health authorities are now permitted to do they shall do in future as a duty. That means a very great change indeed for the majority of local health authority areas. I think that on the whole the local health authorities are the people to do this community work, but it will mean an enormous expansion of trained personnel, it will mean a considerable additional expenditure of money and it will also need a lot of building.
It is a most unhappy coincidence that the idea of putting these new responsibilities on the local authorities should come at a time when the Government are deciding to cut down the central grants to local authorities, because I feel that there is no hope whatever that the local authorities will carry out these recommendations in the spirit in which the Royal Commission made them unless they are given considerable encouragement, including financial encouragement, by the central Government.
In conclusion, I should like to repeat what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew)—that legislation, although long overdue, will not itself give us the new deal for mental health which we urgently need. We need to do very much more. The question of research has been touched upon several times, and for three or four years one or two of us have been trying by Question and Answer to expose what I consider to be the serious failure of the Medical Research Council in research into mental illness. Nothing like enough is being done, and if the new interest in this subject which has been stimulated by the publication of this Report, by a number of broadcasts and television programmes and by serious articles in the Press, is to bear fruit, we

need research above all. The Royal Commission can congratulate itself on having done a first-rate job.

5.22 p.m.

Dr. Reginald Bennett: Before I began to take an interest in my fellow men in this House I spent a number of years taking an interest in them in considerably less august institutions. Therefore, I have been profoundly affected by the new accession of knowledge which has come to us through this Royal Commission's Report. It affects almost every facet of the outlook of one who has been working in mental medicine in any capacity whatever, and I for one welcome that most warmly, because clearly medicine had appeared to outstrip administration in this field for many years past.
I have always had the greatest sympathy with the attitudes of the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) in matters affecting mental health. He is a great lay expert on the subject. I have taken his point about the turning away of patients to which he referred earlier in his speech. When I was practising in mental hospitals, it was a matter of some pride that mental hospitals never turned away patients except under the stress of a complete lack of accommodation; and that did not happen until perhaps twice the designed number of patients was in the wards, whereas the disasters which occurred through the turning away of patients brought in in emergency were nearly always associated with the hospitals concerned with physical disabilities. If that distinction is to be lost administratively, I doubt whether it will be lost in spirit, and I do not fear that mental hospitals will now start turning away the patients sent to them.
I see in the Report that a letter of acceptance has to be provided before the patient is admitted under compulsory powers, but I fancy that that will not give rise to what one might call a stiff-necked attitude in the administration of mental hospitals. If that is possible, perhaps the views of the Government on this subject may be expressed in some way.
I agree with the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North that the phrase "severely sub-normal" is one which


comes a little clumsily to mind in dealing with what we have always known as mental deficiency. In fact, I think I am right in saying that the hon. Gentleman was the first speaker this afternoon to use that phrase, and then only in a critical sense.
The subject with which I have been concerning myself for the many years during which I have been in psychiatric practice has been that of the psychopath. I have tried to draw up papers on the subject and publish them and so on in the past ten years, and it has been one of the most unsatisfactory fields in which to work because of this very difficulty about definition. If one tries to compile any work on psychopaths one comes up against the very same snag which the Royal Commission duly met. That was the first thing I looked for on reading the Report.
Two distinguished authors of a standard text book on psychiatry prefaced their book with this statement:
I cannot define an elephant, but I know one when I see one.
That I think is very apposite to trying to define a psychopath. Almost any psychiatrist—not just those who are very self-opinionated, but those working in all humility—will probably think that he will be prepared to diagnose a psychopathic personality when he meets it, but I doubt if he could define the condition to anybody else.
The Royal Commission has not succeeded either in finding a definition. Perhaps we must come to the conclusion in this connection that the attitude of the Royal Commission to the psychopathic personality is somewhat ahead of its time, in that it leaves the diagnosis to the medical profession, which has got very far in ten years towards reaching some sort of definition; and perhaps by the time we see the new legislation implementing these things it may be possible to pin down this kind of elusive definition with some fair degree of accuracy.
Perhaps I should mention, without being thought to be advertising in any way, that we shall have some of the greatest experts in research in this field coming to this House on the 23rd of this month to address the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, so that we may hear notably what Dr. Dennis Hill has

been doing with his electroencephalograph. He and his school have been making enormous progress, such that I personally would not have claimed to know more than the barest premisses from which their whole structure has been erected since I left the Maudsley Hospital and the practice in psychiatry in those extremely academic surroundings.
The action to be taken about psychopathic personality is another matter which causes me a little doubt. I am far from sure that the Royal Commission was itself sure of what it wants to do about psychopaths. It mentions that they should be dealt with under certain compulsory powers, but in paragraph 34 of the Report the Commission makes what is to me a rather astonishing suggestion—that
doctors and others should not be too hesitant to use compulsory powers,
and
in particular the responsible authorities should not be reluctant to bring criminal charges … because they consider them mentally abnormal.
I feel that in this age when we are trying to make progress with preventive medicine we should not try to push the authorities into bringing criminal charges in order to make it easier for the administration to deal with these people. Surely, we are putting the cart before the horse? We ought to try to get them before they are criminals, and before they have been labelled with a far worse stigma than that of mental illness. I think they have slipped up there, and that that is a symptom of the Royal Commission's inability to be quite sure of what it wanted to do for the detention of psychopaths who are not grossly, or certifiably, psychopathic. I think they are tending to slip up, and I can only hope, if I read the Report right, that this loophole is meant to be filled by a much more extensive and novel use of guardianship under compulsory powers than of the committal to institutions under compulsory powers, which is really tantamount to certification.
The hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) mentioned the difference in the powers to be used for psychopaths under and over the age of 21, respectively. That is a very right decision. A psychopath over 21 has probably long since been a nuisance to everybody around him and is well known as one who, if not


actually involved in criminal proceedings, has been a pest and a public menace for years. But I think it is right to say that the younger psychopaths, who declare themselves quite clearly before the age of 21, are amenable to a certain amount of institutional correction, and the powers in respect of them should therefore be greater.
It is a fact, which the researchers have been working upon, that the psychopath improves spontaneously with the years. Probably every hon. Member knows that. It has been found by those wizards with the electro-encephalograph that the brain waves of a psychopath of any age correspond to the normal brain tracings of somebody many years younger. In fact, it is now seen to be a physical as well as a mental immaturity in every way. Therefore, I might perhaps myself be regarded as being now beyond the danger zone. In fact, by the time anybody enters this House he is probably almost free from any serious threat of the stigma of being called a psychopath. By the age of 30 the brain tracings of most psychopaths have settled down and are not so wildly zigzag. They are then well on the way to becoming more reasonable citizens, although there might have been great room for improvement when they started.
Another question is that of the abrogation of magistrates' committal of patients under compulsory powers. I do not know whether I can say that this is a good thing. I realise, as many hon. Members before me have said, that a magistrate's signature upon a certificate is no more than a formality. The magistrate might not have the faintest clue as to what his patient is up to, except for what is stated on the certificate, and he merely rubber-stamps the document. Do we want the onus of these compulsory powers to rest upon the medical profession? I very much doubt whether the medical profession will want that. It will disturb what has perhaps been made excessive political play of recently, namely, the doctor-patient relationship. It will certainly mean that patients will be leery of going near their doctors if there is any question of mental illness. I doubt whether this power will be welcomed by the medical profession. It will require a good deal of looking into before we can agree to make a decision in accordance with the

recommendation of the Royal Commission.
At this point I should like to consider the position of the doctors who get most of the odium of the use of compulsory powers—the superintendents and the staffs of mental hospitals. I deplore the buildup in the Press which has led to their being regarded almost as ogres, who keep their innocent patients captive. Nearly all of them would prefer an empty bed. They would then be able to admit somebody else. These much maligned doctors, who live in somewhat isolated places, have been greatly overworked on administrative as well as mental work, and they deserve a break from the British public. They have had a rotten time, and some attention might be given to brightening the lives of these rather remotely and "over-integrated" doctors, who very readily tend to join their patients if they are kept inside too long. Their lot might be alleviated considerably in many ways.
I find myself in almost complete agreement with everything which the right hon. Member for Warrington (Dr. Summer-skill) said, which is very pleasant. I much appreciated her point—which has perhaps not been well set out before—about the dreary deterioration of patients who stay in mental hospitals for a long period because of a shortage of staff to give them any form of medical treatment. Before I left the rather rarefied company of researchers they made out that they thought they had discovered that the deterioration of epileptics, for instance, over a period of time is not an integral part of the disease but is all part of that frightful word "institutionalisation". Their hopelessness, and the limbo in which they find themselves, are what cause the symptoms; it is not any part of the epileptic disease.
One other point that the right hon. Lady made which deserves to be underlined—or I would not presume to mention it again—is the question of the new treatments which have made such miraculous cures of diseases where, only a few years ago, the outlook appeared to be utterly hopeless. In that respect I go further than the right hon. Lady went. I say that it is now a wonderful thing—and a fact that we all ought to bear in mind—that the degree of disturbance, violence, disorderliness and irrationality of a patient


is in no sense an indication of the possibilities of a cure; in fact, it could almost be suggested—perhaps by somewhat gross exaggeration—that it is the more violent ones who have the better outlook. We should therefore certainly look to our new cures to bring hope to those whose antics were dismaying their families and neighbours the most.
I feel that this Report has now thrown some great light upon this very dark subject. The dark tunnel-like wards of the old mental hospitals, some of which I know so well, have now come into a blaze of the light of public notice, and I hope that Parliament and the Government will keep them there until all the darkness has cleared away.

5.36 p.m.

Dr. A. D. D. Broughton: I am aware that many hon. Members wish to take part in this short but very important debate, and I shall therefore follow the example set by previous speakers and address the House for only a few minutes.
I listened with great interest and approval to the speech made by the hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett). He and I have very much in common, in that we are the only two hon. Members of this House who have had a long experience in psychiatry. I know of the useful and important work that he has done in connection with psychopaths, and his contribution to our discussions today was a particularly valuable one.
I think that I am right in saying that I am the only practising psychiatrist in this House, and I feel it incumbent upon me, as such, to give a brief expression of opinion on the Royal Commission's Report. The trouble is that the subject under discussion is such a vast one that in the time available one can do no more than touch lightly upon one or two aspects of it.
First, I wish to make it clear that psychiatrists welcome the Report. There are differences of opinion on certain details, but, generally speaking, the Report is warmly welcomed. Although it proposes many radical changes, these come as no surprise at all to psychiatrists, for those of us who work with mental patients have known for a long time that much of the law, as it relates to our patients, is antiquated and in urgent need of being brought up to date. I was

pleased to hear the Parliamentary Secretary tell us that he and the Minister are to have discussions with hospitals and local authorities in the near future. I hope that after the discussions steps will be taken speedily to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission.
Mention has been made by several hon. Members of the overcrowding of mental hospitals and the shortage of staff. Medical officers do not overburden themselves with work deliberately by retaining patients in hospital unnecessarily. Taking the country as a whole, I think that medical superintendents would gladly discharge at least 25 per cent. of their patients if they could be sent out of hospital to satisfactory living and working conditions. But medical superintendents cannot send out of hospital those poor souls who have no other home, no work, possibly no relations and no friends and no social contacts in the outside world. Such a patient in the search for a home and work and friendship would suffer inevitably another breakdown.
Because of that, I welcome the proposal that local authorities should be responsible for all types of community care for patients ready to return to the general community. Such arrangements when made could benefit thousands of patients, relieve the pressure on beds in mental hospitals, and ease the strain on the overworked medical officers and nurses. Of course, it will mean added responsibility and additional expense to the local authorities, but I think they must shoulder that burden if this great problem is to be tackled properly.
When considering the problem of the care of patients, I would draw the attention of the House to the value of day hospitals. I do so because I am at present privileged to serve on the staff of one of them, and I have reached the conclusion that day hospitals can be extremely useful to many types of patients. Like other hospitals, day hospitals have an out-patient department and provide most forms of modern therapy. But they have no beds for night-time. The patients live at home or in lodgings or hostels and come daily to the hospital for their treatment. Such a hospital cannot accept all types of cases. For example those who are a real danger to themselves or others cannot be accepted. But these hospitals


can take a surprisingly large variety of cases of psychosis and neurosis.
Because the hospital has no beds certain forms of treatment cannot be undertaken. For example, it is not possible to admit patients for surgical brain operations or deep insulin therapy or prolonged narcosis. But they can give psychotherapy with or without drugs, occupational and group therapy, electric convulsive therapy, modified insulin and other forms of treatment which do not necessitate the patient staying in bed overnight. Malborough Day Hospital was the first of its kind in this country and has been operating for nearly ten years. From my own experience there and from the study of the hospital records, I am convinced that it has served a useful purpose.
I understand from the Minister who replied to a Question which I put a few months ago that there are now fifteen day hospitals in the country. I suggest the time has come for the Minister to examine this policy when he will find that it is one of great value. It is much cheaper to take over a house and convert it into a day hospital at little cost than to build a new hospital or to extend an existing one. When the hospital has been acquired, the running costs are much lower than those of a residential hospital.
The patients attending day hospitals are not certified. They have no forms to sign. They attend of their own free will. The mention of certification brings me to that subject about which I have strong views. As the House knows, patients entering our mental hospitals do so as certified, temporary or voluntary patients. The procedure for temporary patients is somewhat complicated. It can be troublesome and may lead to difficulties. Consequently many medical superintendents do not welcome temporary patients. Most of our patients in mental hospitals are either voluntary or certified. A patient can be a voluntary patient only if he is well enough to sign an application form expressing a positive wish to receive treatment. If the patient is incapable of doing that, he cannot enter the hospital as a voluntary patient. I suggest that the result is that many patients are certified who never should be.
May I quote a couple of examples from my own experience in mental hos-

pitals fairly recently. One is the case of a man aged 82. He was a fine, sturdy, independent type of fellow. He had led a good and useful life, worked hard and brought up a family. It is not surprising that at his age his arteries were hardened and that one day he had a cerebral thrombosis. The effect upon him was that he became severely mentally confused. He was restless and resisted all attention. He could not be managed at home and was unacceptable for admission to a general hospital. A mental hospital was the only place for him and, therefore, he was certified. That man died within a week, and death was due to old age. I think it quite wrong that it should have been necessary for that man to have been certified as being of unsound mind in the last week of his long life.
Another case which I wish to quote is that of a woman of thirty who had had a great deal of domestic worry and trouble causing her to be depressed. She had neglected herself, eating little, drinking too much and losing a great deal of weight. She became stuporose and resisted all attention. She was certified and brought into a mental hospital. On examination she was found to be suffering from pneumonia. She died within two days and the post-mortem examination showed a massive low-grade pneumonia. Her mental condition had been due to her general debility and toxaemia from the pneumonia.
In both these cases there was a physical explanation for the condition and the mental derangement was a terminal phase of the fatal illness. Everyone who has worked in mental hospitals could quote similar cases by the score. I suggest that the only way to abolish this injustice, this stigma, is to abolish certification. There will have to be some powers for the compulsory detention of a few dangerous patients, but for the majority I should like to see mental and nervous cases able to enter mental hospitals just as patients can enter other hospitals.
The Report states:
Great progress has been made during the present century in developing methods of treatment in many forms of mental disorder.
That is true. I am very proud to say that Britain has been to the forefront in these advances. This year I was granted the privilege of visiting mental hospitals


in France, Western Germany and Czechoslovakia. Whilst there I met many distinguished psychiatrists and saw much of interest, but I can say with confidence that, broadly speaking, they are not ahead of us. Nevertheless, although we can be proud of our achievements in the field of psychiatry, much remains to be done.
Hon. and right hon. Members speaking today have put their fingers on the various bad spots, drawing the attention of the Minister—if indeed it needed to be drawn, as I think he is already aware of it—to the need for improvements in this field of medicine, but I think it is a fact that psychiatry is the Cinderella of the Health Service. It is quite ridiculous that it should be so, because half our hospital beds are occupied by patients with mental illness and it is probably true to say that as many as 75 per cent. of patients who go to visit their general practitioners are suffering from some form or other of psychosomatic illness.
Our hospitals are overcrowded, the establishment for medical officers in them is only 80 per cent. filled, there is a great shortage of nurses and, consequently, the treatment of patients really is not yet good enough. There is far too little research being done. As hon. Members have already mentioned, there is need for much more research.
I welcome the attention that this House is giving to the Report of the Royal Commission. I hope that the, Minister, assisted by the Parliamentary Secretary, will push ahead with the discussions that they are to have with local authorities, hospital authorities and others and waste no time in drawing up the necessary legislation to implement the recommendations of this Report, for it is necessary that great efforts should now be made to help those people who have the great misfortune to be suffering from nervous and mental illnesses.

5.54 p.m.

Dr. Donald Johnson: I rise to welcome this Report as much as any hon. Member who has so far spoken in the debate. I must say that my admiration for it is equalled only by my admiration for the Parliamentary Secretary, who told me the other day that he had read it through twice. It has been my constant companion, but I regret to say that I have got only as far as paragraph 458 in my own thorough reading

and have to content myself with just a smattering of knowledge picked up here and there of subsequent recommendations.
When one tries to look at the Report from a detached point of view, I think that what inevitably strikes anyone is the revolutionary nature of its recommendations as compared with the general mildness of its criticisms of the existing system. Indeed, I think any newcomer to this House listening to the opening speeches of this debate, would really wonder whether there was any necessity to make any changes at all. It was to some extent, therefore, in anticipation of this situation that the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds) and I, over the past year, have worked together, sinking our party differences, to fill what we felt might be a gap. We, perhaps, have formed one of the pockets of disaffection to which my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary referred in his opening remarks.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: May I correct my hon. Friend? I did not refer to "disaffection"; I just said "irresponsibility".

Dr. Johnson: I stand corrected, but I think that hon. Members who, apparently, will not find sufficient reasons in the Report as such for this or that recommendation, may well find them in the speeches and Questions which have been asked in this House and possibly in publications outside.
Rightly or wrongly, it is the custom for any criticism of our health and welfare services at present to be expressed in somewhat muted tones. Therefore, it is natural and proper that when we come to the recommendations of the Commission for the abolition of the Board of Control the Commission should distribute bouquets such as we find in paragraphs 788 and 791 of the Report in regard to work well done and such as have been repeated in this House. I, on the other hand, will be sending no orchids to the obsequies of the Board of Control. It has outlived its usefulness in the manner which has already been stated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton).
It is proper, also, that we should pay every tribute to those who work in these services and also to the undoubted advances that have been made in treatment and the general improvement of


conditions but, if we are going to reform, I submit that it is essential to know not only what we are going to reform, but why we are going to reform.
What one finds in taking a view of the mental health services of the country is an extreme variability between one district and another and one hospital and another. It is insufficient that here and there we should have the best—as, indeed, we have, as I am the first to admit. We must also think of the worst. To get a satisfactory service we must bring up the worst to the level of the best.
At the risk of continuing in heresy, I maintain that no one can give us better criticisms of what is wrong than the patient, even when the patient, as occasionally he does, complains. After all, there is nothing like being at the receiving end and, where compulsory powers exist, it is very easy for those who exercise them to live in a world of self-delusion, unless they take careful note of and listen to those unfortunate enough to be at the receiving end.
We are united in this House this afternoon in our anxiety to take the stigma out of mental illness. In this process we can start now, because if there is one thing more than anything else on which the mental patient and the ex-mental patient feel they are stigmatised it is that they are discredited people, that no one will believe them, no one will listen to them and give them facilities for putting their case. We have already heard it somewhat jestingly stated that anyone who differs from the psychiatrist is dubbed a psychopath. That is, perhaps, an exaggeration, but some of them are certainly dubbed paranoiacs if they complain of any form of psychiatric or other hospital treatment.
In particular, I welcome the fact that the Royal Commission examined a number of witnesses who were former mental patients, and published their evidence as a supplementary Report. At the beginning of what I hope will be a series of debates on this subject, I ask hon. Members to believe not that everything mental patients say should be implicitly believed, but that no evidence should be disregarded, just because it comes from mental patients, without carefully weighing it.
In this short debate there is little time to discuss in detail all the recommendations of the Report, so I propose to try to look at the matter in perspective and in the broadest outline. The effect of the Commission's Report on any further legislation would be to reform and bring up to date the Act of 1890, so I think it appropriate that, as a basic consideration, we look at that Act.
It is a reasonable Act in its way and in the context of the times in which it was enacted. Let us see what was the context of those times. If a man was mentally ill in those days, he did not go to any early consultation to see what was the matter with him. He hung on and on, until he was really mad in the proper sense of the word; his personality became disintegrated, he became impossible for others to deal with; and was then put away out of society, perhaps indefinitely, by the operation of this Act. That was the atmosphere that overhung the whole situation—an atmosphere of indefiniteness, of incurability, of general hopelessness and, perhaps, of degeneracy.
In those days the asylums were places far more isolated even than is the case today, in the age of the motor car. Consequently, they became populated with these people and infected with this atmosphere of hopelessness. In most cases, the people in them were those who, it was thought, would never recover; although there were occasionally included those who were not so ill but who had, nevertheless, slipped into the net. To prevent a man slipping into the net too easily, various defences of individual liberty were written into the Act.
Fortunately, times have changed. But they have not changed as much as all that, nor have they changed everywhere alike. For instance, the continuity of tradition, associated with the continuity of the law, has remained very strong inside many of these institutions. I hope that it will not be thought that I am just cracking at medical superintendents when I say this, because the more enlightened medical superintendents will themselves say that it is this tradition which is their most formidable obstacle to effecting improvements in their own institutions.
This tradition is the basis of the patients' main burden of complaint. Their complaint is, first, the attitude with which


they are regarded by those they meet in the institution when they enter it. Coming from the outside world as they do, and being not always dull people, but frequently especially sensitive people, they feel that very strongly. This attitude varies, naturally. In many hospitals the patients do not sense it at all. In others, where the tradition has remained stronger, the patients are very conscious of it indeed.
Their complaint, secondly, is their isolation—the fact that they are frequently cut off from friends and relatives and, above all, occasionally from legal advisers. Then, thirdly, the fact that, if they are removed to an institution compulsorily under certificate, they are deprived of their civic rights and—and this is immensely stressed by them—they are unable to deal with their financial affairs, which are taken right out of their hands immediately by the operation of law.
The primary cause of all this is these legal formalities which still surround the fact of admission to mental hospitals, particularly in the case of certified patients. A certified patient today immediately becomes a second-class or third-class citizen. That is why one welcomes so much the de-designation of the hospitals which is recommended by the Royal Commission. I particularly welcome paragraph 849 of the Report, in which the Commission actually recommends that even compulsory admission to hospital should not necessarily involve the patient being deprived of the control of his financial affairs. I welcome the remarks in that paragraph about the Commission's realisation of the distress, the immense distress that people feel over this, and I sincerely hope that that realisation will be noted when it comes to effecting new legislation.
We can look forward to vast changes in the whole atmosphere of our mental services through the de-designation of mental hospitals. It is fair to predict that the area in which compulsion has to be exercised will be greatly reduced, and will become very much more manageable than it is at present. Compulsory powers are, of course, occasionally necessary, just as it is necessary to have protection against their wrongful use.
There is no time to go into details in this respect, but, in particular, I welcome the recommendation that where compulsory powers are exercised two doctors should be called in so that there is at least some chance of establishing a proper diagnosis. I welcome, too, the independent tribunals which are so desperately a missing feature of the present System I should like to echo what the hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett) has said about the dislike doctors have of being completely responsible for the exercise of these compulsory powers. In any case, where there is compulsory detention there should not be too long a period before legal procedure is taken, and the suggested period of six months is. I think, rather lengthy.
Whatever protections we put into future legislation I suggest that they should be tied up completely. We must not allow them to degenerate into the mere paper protections, of which there is no better object lesson than the 1890 Act. That Act is full of protection for individual liberties, which one after the other have gone by the board and have in many cases become completely valueless because of the loophole in the Act and because of the easy process of certification which in recent years has been found convenient to use.
I should like to say a great deal more on this subject, but time is getting short. Therefore, I should like, in conclusion, to express my pleasure at two recommendations in this Report which cover the mental deficiency, or psychopath, field as we shall probably be calling it. The first of these recommendations is that relatives shall have the right of discharge of all patients who come under the psychopath and mental deficiency laws, as well as the mental illness laws, except where there is court procedure; and, secondly, that psychopaths will not be detained over the age of 25.
I think it is agreed that we can do very little by way of treatment for psychopaths over the age of 25. If they get on the wrong side of the law and it is necessary to detain them for that reason, that is quite another matter, but I think it is generally agreed that treatment as such is of very little use.
Mental illness is a large and unwieldy problem, but I suggest that problems are apt to create themselves, and if they are


tackled competently, thoroughly and on right principles they reduce in size. I suggest that the Royal Commission's Report shows such a way to meet this problem of mental illness. We should appreciate that it cannot perhaps be implemented all at once. In fact, it may well be advisable to contemplate its introduction in two stages. The first stage, and perhaps the immediately urgent, is the de-designation of hospitals and the revision of the admission procedure. The second stage, which is admitted to be the more difficult, is to get the local authorities services functioning, to deal with the question of expense, to get them to work new duties and so on.
I am confident that, given good will, the Commission's Report, looked at from a practical point of view and carried forward with enthusiasm, will introduce a new era in the general treatment and administration of mental illness in the country.

6.13 p.m.

Mr. R. W. Sorensen: This has been a bipartisan debate, a fact which some people may deplore but I do not because there is a wide field in which all parties and all persons can join together for the common good. Moreover, I think that this at least has been established in our discussion today, that all parties agree to what some of us would call the Socialist principle and what others, no doubt, would call the ethical principle—the principle that we are responsible for the well-being of a considerable and important section of our community. Some of us, of course, wish to expand that principle elsewhere.
I understand that even the hon. Member for Carlisle (Dr. Johnson) does not disagree with the proposals that have emanated from the consideration of this problem by the Royal Commission. As does everybody else, I, too, bear testimony to the thorough analysis which has been made of this problem by the medical and lay members of the Commission. It is significant, however, that there are both medical and lay members. It is significant because perhaps we should not overlook the necessity for the laity also to be consulted on the treatment of mental illness at other stages than the preliminary stages, and to be consulted along with the medical experts.

It has been said today by some hon. Members that the Report embodies revolutionary or far-reaching proposals. I venture humbly to disagree. I submit that the proposals, although admirable, are no greater advance relatively speaking than the advance registered in what is called the Greenwood Act, the Mental Treatment Act, 1930. I was present when it was passed and I remember the debates very well.
I was, as a mere layman, associated with mental illness for many years until 1945. In fact, in 1923, when I was first elected to the Essex County Council, I was asked on what committees I would like to serve. Having indicated that I would like to serve on the education committee and the public health committee, I was informed almost by return of post that it was considered more advisable to put me on what was then called the lunatic asylums committee. On that body I served for twenty-one years, and as a layman, therefore, I have had limited experience, I admit, but some experience which certainly was in my mind when, in 1930, the Greenwood Bill was introduced and ultimately became an Act.
What I see in this Report, which, I hope, will be applied administratively or even legislatively in course of time, is an expansion of the enlightenment that was embodied in the Greenwood Act. Expansion is highly desirable. The twenty-seven years which have elapsed since the discussion and passing of that Measure have brought many things to light. It is highly desirable, therefore, that by empirical means we should discover how we can still further improve and expand principles which were well recognised in 1930. We should, therefore, consider specific means by which those proposals of expansion can be carried into effect.
I hope most earnestly that we and the general public will recognise that there is a very great danger in exaggerating the weaknesses and limitations which we know exist in the treatment of mentally ill patients today. Some few weeks ago I read in one of the newspapers a well-known and respected publicist declare that 10,000 or 20,000 people were in mental hospitals who should not be there. It depends what is meant by that. If it is meant that there should be other and better kinds of treatment available


for them, we would all agree because, certainly, there are many patients in mental hopitals today for whom there should be other kinds of hospitalisation. In the absence of that, they should certainly not be transferred.
If, on the other hand, the statement that 10,000 or 20,000 people are in mental hospitals who should not be there means that they are sane people who are being treated as insane, I would submit that that is not only a gross perversion of the truth but leaves the most lamentable impression in people's minds if they assume that there is a great army of hapless, hopeless, sane people who, for a malicious and malignant reason, are being detained behind bars and treated abominably in some of our hospitals.

Mr. Percy Shurmer: It is quite untrue.

Mr. Sorensen: I admit that there is a possibility of error, but as a result of twenty-one years' close association with one and some contact with three mental hospitals and of membership of a mental hospital committee, every fortnight visiting the wards and the patients, talking to doctors and relatives, and after a great deal of discussion with mental patients today and having met those who have been in hospital and are now discharged, all I can say is that any idea that there is gross ill-treatment or unnecessary detention of vast numbers of patients is quite untrue. The sooner we make that clear, the better for the sake of the patients themselves and their relatives.
We all know that there are numbers of simple people—I have met them myself and have interviewed them—who have no really sound idea about mental illness. To give them the impression that their loved ones or friends are being treated in sinister segregation is to do a great disservice to them and the nation. I have to say that because there has been this unfortunate exaggeration in certain quarters, and that is why, while I warmly welcome what is proposed in the Report, I submit that we must not assume that these proposals are themselves an implicit admission of all the grossly exaggerated charges which have been made in the last few months in the Press and elsewhere.
The subject of our debate deserves detailed discussion, and we are grateful to those who have, with expert knowledge,

spoken so far. Though I do not intend to detain the House for long, I feel that I should refer to the proposal that there should be abolition of certification. That is, no doubt, highly desirable, but, here again, we should not assume, or allow the public to assume, that this will mean that compulsion will be abolished. In my humble estimation, we shall find a very small reduction in the number of patients compulsorily detained as compared with the number of those certified.
I do not believe that the great majority of patients now certified—they are now in the minority—are certified for malicious reasons. There must be some genuine and valid reason why patients are certified. They are certified because they need treatment, because either their relatives are not prepared to recommend that treatment or, because, unfortunately, they cannot decide what it is they need. They will not get the necessary treatment and help unless they are certified. Therefore, the mere elimination of the word "certification" will not mean the absence of compulsion, nor will it remove the problem. There is a number of human beings who, for one reason or another, are so mentally ill that they need, for their own sakes, to be compelled to receive treatment even as we insist on certification for infectious disease. Whether we call it "certification" or give it some other name makes no real difference.
The same applies to our terminology. The word "psychopath" seems less offensive than the word "idiot" or the word "imbecile". If I were to refer to any hon. Member in either of the latter terms, I am sure that Mr. Speaker would soon call me to order. If I were to refer to an hon. Gentleman as a "psychopath", that would, I suppose, sound less objectionable. But, in fact, whether we use the word "psychopath," "idiot," "madman," or anything else, in course of time the term can acquire an association which is offensive. This is why I am glad that so many hon. Members have referred to the stigma associated by many people with mental disorder and have condemned it, whatever the terminology associated with it.
It is good that from time to time there should be a review not only of administrations and treatment, but also of the terminology used; but, though there is no reason why we should not use new terms,


the mere exchange of terms by itself will not remove the stigma. What we must do is what, indeed, so many have pleaded for. We must recognise that mental disorder or illness carries no more stigma than a broken leg, blindness, pneumonia, or any other physical illness or disability.
We must get rid of the idea that there is a chasm between physical disorder, on the one hand, and mental disorder on the other; we know that they act and interact. The sooner the public mind appreciates that, whether we are ill physically or ill mentally, we are just ill, and need healing, the better for all, and the sooner will the absurd idea that there is some stigma attached to mental disorder be abolished. All of us are liable to both physical and mental illness.
Let us welcome the Report and let us pay tribute to the men and women, lay and medical, who have devoted great attention to it, but let us not cast a reflection on the admirable work which has been done in the past by assuming that what is now proposed is as revolutionary as some seem to suggest. It represents an expansion in the light of experience and new knowledge, a welcome expansion which we all wish to see, an expansion which springs from a deeper and sympathetic appreciation of how we can treat these disordered fellow human beings. The more we go along those lines, with the exercise of our own sanity and balance, the more will the foolish idea of a stigma being attached to mental illness be removed until it is finally abolished altogether.

6.25 p.m.

Miss Mervyn Pike: We have heard a great deal about the treatment of mental illness and the law relating to it, but very little has been said about prevention, and I should like to remind hon. Members of the great importance of prevention in mental health.
The right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) referred to paragraph 87 of the Royal Commission's Report where the Commission draws attention to the importance of environment and a person's adaptation to society and human relationships, and she stressed the value of the psychiatric social worker's function. The right hon. Lady referred to the cost of these services and

asked how they were to be paid for by the local authorities.
It is important, in this debate, to draw attention to the need for preventive work in mental health. Mental disorder is one of the most tragic illnesses. When it strikes one human being, it affects the whole family. Also, it is a very expensive illness, and any money which can be spent in prevention performs a two-fold service, cutting down the toll of human suffering and, in fact, saving the material resources of the nation. In my view, therefore, we should pay close attention to the co-ordination and integration of these most important public services operated by the local authorities, such as community centres, youth centres, and marriage guidance clinics.
I regard child guidance clinics as very important in this respect. I have taken a great interest in the work of child guidance clinics, because I did for some time work in one. There is no doubt that the child guidance clinics play a very important part in prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Here again, early diagnosis is something upon which part of our legislation should be focussed, because, in mental illness more than in any other illness, time is very important.
I ask hon. Members to give their attention to the problem of prevention and the valuable part which can be played by such services as the child guidance clinics. It is tragic that there should today be long waiting lists in these clinics. The Report recommends that the child guidance clinic could be a nucleus for a general, comprehensive health service, and I commend to all hon. Members that suggestion. Prevention can do an enormous amount in reducing suffering, and, if we emphasise the importance of the problem and of the good work which can be done as I have suggested, we may go a long way towards solving the question of how the money will be found.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. Charles Royle: It is with very great humility, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I attempted to catch your eye, because this has been entirely a debate of specialists.
The hon. Lady the Member for Melton (Miss Pike), if I may say so, herself showed considerable knowledge of the


problem, and followed what had already been said. It is significant that there have been sitting on the benches opposite three right hon. Gentlemen who have, at one time or another, held the office of Minister of Health.
We remember that the right hon. Gentleman who is now the Minister of Labour and National Service was the Minister of Health at the time when the Royal Commission was appointed. We are greatly indebted to him for having done so, although, if I may say so, he was under very great pressure from, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson). But, for all that, the right hon. Gentleman appointed the Royal Commission, and the House owes him a debt.
Conscious of my temerity in rising to speak at all, I wish to devote my attention to a specific aspect of the Report only, and it may well be that the House will very quickly realise to what part of the Report I wish to devote attention. My text is contained in paragraph 40 of the Report:
It is essential that the working of the new procedures should be in the hands of the people who have the sort of knowledge and experience needed to form a sound judgment on the questions at issue … No one who is not medically qualified should be required to state an opinion on the patient's state of mind or need for care on his own responsibility, even after considering medical certificates, nor to take action without medical advice.
The few words I want to say are front the viewpoint of the magistrate. Whatever happens, in spite of our desire to reach the stage of voluntary admission, some amount of compulsory admission will remain. I agree entirely, therefore, with the terms of the Report when the Commission repeats in paragraph 390 the opinion that present methods are
not satisfactory from the layman's point of view nor from the doctor's and in our view is of little value as a safeguard to the patient.
I am in complete agreement, and I disagree with the hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett), who touched upon the subject, concerning magistrates.
I would not dare to suggest that I should be speaking for magistrates in general in agreeing with what the hon. Member said concerning the Report, but I know very well that I am speaking for a responsible sub-committee of the Magistrates' Association in expressing the belief that undoubtedly the stigma is

increased because the magistrate is brought in at the time of certification. I am perfectly sure of that and I think that the time has come to get rid of this system.
Let us consider briefly what happens. A doctor is brought to see a patient. He regards it as desirable that the patient should be certified. The patient may be taken to the local hospital as a temporary measure. Perhaps in the middle of the night, a justice of peace is called out of his bed to assist in the certification. The justice of peace is not in the right frame of mind to begin with, and it is totally unfair to lay upon the magistrate, as a lay person, the grave responsibility for this great task. I know that this argument leads to the abolition of the judicial authority and I consider that abolition is desirable.
Paragraph 265 of the Report gives the history of the magisterial jurisdiction and it tells how, many years ago, county justices were the forerunners of the county councils with the administrative powers under the Poor Law. Until 1889, they were responsible for the building and management of what were then called lunatic asylums. Every Member of the House will agree that that system is long out of date. In my view, the present recommendation is the logical conclusion.
I have a great deal of faith in my fellow justices, but in these days this duty is not in keeping with their appointment in any way. There is too much likelihood that it is a mere formality to bring in the justice of the peace. The doctor involved in the early stages may be right or may be wrong in asking for compulsory detention, but the magistrate is in no position either to confirm or to contradict. He is completely lacking in knowledge of these matters, unless he has had a medical training, and I do not believe that he ought to be in on it at all. I do not oppose the abolition of the judicial authority, because I consider that the safeguards are sufficient at present without the magistrate.
What I want is a more sure and authoritative safeguard. This is dealt with in paragraphs 42 and 396 to 407. In those paragraphs, the Report recommends second medical opinions. My view is that one doctor might do it with certain limitations, that he should have the power to detain, say, for one week on his own


responsibility, perhaps as the general practitioner of the family concerned, and that following that we might appoint in every area a panel of three mental specialists—doctors—who would be called upon to certify in compulsory cases for the more unlimited period of time.
Surely it would be possible to find such panels and for every county to find sufficient experts to man them. The large cities certainly could. The smaller county boroughs could bring in the assistance of the counties for the creation of such panels. They, rather than the present setup, would be responsible for the ultimate certification. After that, I would go on to the review tribunal in an appeal sense if the patient or his relatives felt that the certification was not justified. That is my view concerning certification. I feel very strongly that the magistrates should no longer be brought into it.
Coinciding with that is the question of discharge. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds) and the hon. Member for Carlisle (Dr. D. Johnson) have been very active in recent months on the question of discharge and it is certainly an important question. I feel that the suggestions contained in paragraphs 421 to 427 of the Report are wholly good and, if adopted in the form of legislation, would provide sufficient safeguard for the patient, for the relatives, for the medical staff and for the community at large.
Paragraphs 511 onwards deal with court procedure when children and young persons are felt to be mentally ill, severely sub-normal, or psychopathic. I hope it will be agreed that great care is necessary and that if legislation follows the Report we shall have full opportunity to discuss it. All such cases in which children and young persons are concerned as mental defectives must be heard under the juvenile or domestic court procedure. Under no circumstances must they drift into the open court.
My last word concerns the application of Section 28 of the National Health Service Act. I shall not take up time by quoting the relevant parts of the Report, but the Parliamentary Secretary will find what I mean in paragraphs 714 and 715 with a further reference in paragraph 14 of Part V, in page 247. This applies only to mental defectives. At the

moment that Section 28 of the National Health Service Act makes provision permissible: the local authorities are not compelled to make it. The Report recommends that it shall be compulsory. I hope that when legislation comes it will be compulsory on local authorities that that provision shall be made.
I say again as a magistrate that one of our great problems in dealing with this type of patient—because although these people come before us as defendants, in many cases they are, in effect, patients—is the lack of places to which they can be sent. We must do something about that and do it very quickly.
So, in general, with every other hon. Member who has spoken in the debate, I welcome the Report, and I express sincere thanks to Lord Percy and his colleagues for the great job of work they have done. I hope that legislation will be before us soon. I hope that we shall hear in the next Speech from the Throne a statement that we shall have the legislation quickly.

6.41 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): I am rising solely because the Government thought this a matter of sufficient importance for a member of the Cabinet to intervene just for a few minutes in reply to the speech of the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) and to the many constructive speeches which have been made in the debate. I, also, shall not detain the House very long.
I should like to join the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Royle) in paying tribute to the present Minister of Labour on setting up this Commission. I think that both the Parliamentary Secretary, who has acquitted himself so nobly in his chief's absence, and the Minister, who, I hope, is gradually becoming restored to his normal health, will join with me in that tribute to one of their predecessors.
I think that the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) is quite right in saying that we should debate this subject more often. We are apt to go round on the same record with the needle sticking year after year. Indeed, I have had plenty of experience of this. Those debates we have had, like the debate we


had the other day on penal reform, find the soul and conscience of the House, and they really make very much more repercussion in the country than some of our more reiterative debates followed by the perpetual perambulation through the Lobbies afterwards. I hope that we shall have a debate like this again.
It so happens that I am, and have been for some years, the President of the National Association for Mental Health. It is, therefore, not altogether unsuitable that I should take part in the debate, though I would make clear that I am not in any way speaking for that Associaiton today. I would be unfair to it if I were thought to do so. Indeed, that is precisely the sort of body which the Government have to consult at some length on the findings of the Commission. I am certain that it welcomes the Report, though I am not here to say so. I am equally certain that the Government welcome the Commission's remarkable Report, and I would pay my tribute to Lord Percy and his fellow members of the Commission.
The object of this debate was to give the first opportunity for consultation with the House of Commons. I say the "first" because I think that perhaps the only error into which some hon. Members may have fallen has been to think that consultation will be able to be carried out absolutely immediately. We have already started consultations, but it will take time. This debate has already indicated to me various points upon which we shall want further clarification. As my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend, who will be in charge of any Bill we may produce, will want to work with the House, I hope that this will not be the only occasion for consultation. I know I am not letting them down in asking hon. Members to keep in touch with them and with the Ministry of Health in this formative period.
The right hon. Lady asked whether the findings of the Commission would be embodied in legislation. I thought, therefore, it was also appropriate for me to speak as Leader of the House. I want to deal with this by reference to three of the most clipped paragraphs in the Commission's Report under the simple heading:
Need for new legislation

because they really sum it up in a few words. The Commission says this, in paragraph 60:
Many of our recommendations for the development of community health and welfare services can be undertaken under local authorities' existing powers without new legislation, but there are some points on which amendment or clarification of the present law would be needed.
That enables me to answer the point raised also by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot), himself a considerable expert on this as on many other subjects. He asked whether it was wise to delegate so much to the local authorities, and other hon. Members have asked whether, apart from legislation, the Government can give an assurance that progress will be made administratively. I am trying to clip everything together, and that enables me to answer these two points.
I would say that we want further consultation with the local authorities and with hon. Members and all concerned before we decide whether the immense area of delegation recommended by the Commission is advisable. But we think that we are behind the Commission in this. It depends partly, of course, on finance, about which I shall say a word in a moment, but it is also a matter which we should follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove in examining with great care. The local authorities, I am sure, are ready for the job, but we must continue to examine the question.
The Commission says there are other points on which
amendment or clarification of the present law would be needed.
I shall come to those in a moment, but I want to refer to what my right hon. Friend said about research. I have been provided by the Ministry of Health and my colleagues with information on the whole matter of research which is now taking place. It is quite considerable, but I think I should acknowledge, on their behalf as well as my own, that an indefinite amount of research could do nothing but good. It is almost exactly the same kind of problem as that with which I am faced in penal reform, in that without the guide of statistics one cannot do proper navigation.
Without going into detail about the institutions in which research is carried out at present—and I find that it is on a


considerable scale in the hospitals and elsewhere—I would only add that research in industry and outside is, of course, equally important in mental health. Indeed, in appealing for help on behalf of the National Association for Mental Health some time ago to industrialists I hope that I was able to convince them of the need for their voluntary support of this work, because without further research in industry as well as in hospitals it is impossible to make progress along the whole front.
Do not let us regard research as coming purely under the Government. Let us encourage it elsewhere. I am simply giving a general undertaking, on behalf of the Government, in answer to the points made, for example, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove, that we regard research as of vital importance in this problem.
The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Maldon (Mr. Turton), also a former Minister of Health, pressed the importance of doing what we can by administrative means. I have answered that by saying that we will do so in so far as our consultations permit it and it is considered to be wise.
I now come to the major point raised by the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington, about legislation itself. That is referred to in the next two paragraphs of the Report, paragraphs 61 and 62. The first refers to
The transfer to local authorities of responsibility for the registration or approval of hospitals and homes outside the national health service and for the general oversight of patients in private care …
That is one lesser aspect of new legislation which we accept. The other is the major aspect of new legislation, which is summed up as follows, in paragraph 62:
Our recommendations for new procedures"—
to which the right hon. Lady referred—
to apply to individual patients and for the abolition of the Board of Control would entail the complete repeal of the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts and Mental Deficiency Acts and their replacement by a new Act laying down the circumstances in which compulsion might be used in future and the procedures to be followed.
Then it draws attention to some statutes which would need alteration.
We are quite prepared to face the major and minor tasks of the transfer to local authorities of the
responsibility for the registration or approval of hospitals …
I cannot give a guarantee, here and now, in which Session legislation will fall, not because we want to go backwards or because I want, by saying that, to indicate that we are jettisoning the Commission's findings, but because I must insist, on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, and the Government as a whole, that consultation with the bodies concerned, whether local authority, hospital, or this House, or another place, is absolutely vital if we are to mobilise the best opinion.
I am not at all convinced that it would be possible to do this in time for the coming Session. If we can leave the matter like that, we will see how we get on. But I unreservedly accept the recommendation of the Commission for a revision of the law, and that it should be broadly on the lines indicated in the Report.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said that not only the law wanted radically altering, but that buildings wanted radically altering. While I am no longer Chancellor of the Exchequer and, therefore, must be somewhat cautious in what I say. I am still able to quote statistics comparatively accurately.

Mr. Royle: The right hon. Gentleman was cautious when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Butler: I am able to point out to the House that the total capital expenditure on mental and mental deficiency hospitals has already, under the administration of my right hon. Friend and his predecessors, increased from an average of 22 per cent. of the total of national investment in hospital building for the years 1948 to 1955 to no less than 34 per cent, in 1955–56. That is an earnest of the efforts of those immediate predecessors of my right hon. Friend the Minister to improve the proportion of the national investment in hospitals which is devoted to mental and mental deficiency hospitals.
As one of those who has had, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to review parsimony with which the national


finances are conducted, I can assure hon. Members that I realise that this field of mental hospitals is one in which we simply must make a forward move. If possible, it should be on the line of preparing new designs and not simply of repairing the old buildings. Just as with my own problem of the prisons, we need not just refurbishing but the redesigning of smaller units. The two problems are remarkably similar, and that gives me an additional opportunity of speaking about them with absolute sincerity today.
I want to say one word about the Commission's Report from the point of view of the Home Office. I have personally studied the proposal for giving the Courts of Record new powers for dealing with mentally disordered persons convicted of criminal offences and also those relating to the treatment of persons in prisons, Borstal or approved schools found to be mentally disordered. The Commission, for example, suggests that consideration should be given to the extent to which the principles underlying its proposals can be applied to Broadmoor.
May I take up a phrase of the right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington about personal liberty in relation to the position in Broadmoor and the Commission's Report? In view of the proposals which come before me, it is the difficulty of reconciling the individual's right to liberty and society's right to protection which presses heavily upon one's mind. I simply undertake, from the point of view of administration at the Home Office, to do what I can to carry out the spirit of the Commission's Report.
I now come to the points raised in relation to what might be described as the new procedures and the new definition. Members will not expect me, in a debate, the design of which was to listen for advice, to decide absolutely what the policy should be, for example, on the problem of the psychopath, to which the right hon. Lady referred, and on the subject of which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leyton (Mr. Sorensen) made so remarkable a contribution.
The philosopher Coleridge never tired of asserting that the human mind is composed of a great deal more than intelligence. He described the shaping spirit of imagination. The question before us involves the whole rich and complex

range of the emotions. Therefore, it is not surprising if, in one afternoon, it is not possible for Her Majesty's Ministers to accept a definition put forward by the right hon. Lady, even though she did do her courting in a mental home.
We shall study her definition and also the other definitions given to us. We realise that the Commission found it unfortunate that the same general term "mental defective" should be applied both to patients who are seriously subnormal in all aspects of their personality and to those who are normal or near normal in their intelligence. That is a very great achievement of the Commission. I think that it can be fairly said that the minds of this latter group have developed unevenly, so that although they may be capable of normal or near normal performance in intelligence their powers of reasoning or of emotional control may sometimes be dangerously immature.
The Commission emphasised that we have to decide how to deal with the difficult problems relating to the feeble minded who are at present covered by the Mental Deficiency Acts, and to the mental defectives of higher intelligence. That is a very great contribution. We cannot expect all to be in absolute agreement. In answer to the hon. Member for Woolwich, East, I do not believe that, looking back, the law as at present codified has been unduly stretched. We can argue about that at another time. I do not think that the Commission felt so, but it certainly felt that the law wants altering and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett) who has spent so much of his time in this sphere.
I should like to conclude by saying that not only on the technical definition will the Government study the arguments put forward in the course of the debate this afternoon; but they will also take up the challenge of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove. My right hon. Friend said that this was a great adventure. I have always thought it so.
I remember the first time I met, in Canada, the surgeon who has done so much in exploring the recesses of the mind and has received the O.M. in recognition of it. We simply do not know what occurs in a great part of the human mind and we should accept what was


said by the hon. Member for Leyton, that there should not be in future the stigma of differentiation between physical and mental disorder. We should realise that we must bring in the community to help in the cure of this disease.
That is why the community care recommended by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk is so important. We want a little time because we must bring in the community, the authorities and Parliament, and must have opinion with us—otherwise, we cannot make a success on the broad, majestic scale that the Commission's Report demands. If we are given a little time, I can only say to the House that the time will be most thoroughly used.

6.57 p.m.

Sir Keith Joseph: I am sure that the whole House will welcome the humane and constructive speech which the Home Secretary has just delivered, and the acceptance by the Government, expressed by him, of the need of legislation when consultations have occurred on what he has called the broad front covered by the Royal Commission's recommendations.
Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I shall concentrate on one small part of this subject, and I am choosing that of local authorities. The House ought to recognise that it is not only the Percy Report, but also the Piercy Report, which, in the near future—

It being Seven o'clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS, under Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business), further Proceeding stood postponed.

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

7.1 p.m.

Mr. John Parker: I should like to oppose the Second Reading of this Bill because it does not include any proposal on the general point of transferring out-county London County Council estates to the local authorities within whose boundaries they happen to be, and, in particular, because it does not include provision for transferring those L.C.C. estates, especially a large part of the Becontree Estate, which happens to be in my constituency, to Dagenham Council.
This matter has been raised before and there have been discussions between London County Council and Dagenham and Barking Councils. We have had talks, but no satisfactory conclusions have been reached on this important issue. There was an earlier debate on this matter in this House this year. I apologise to the House for being unable to be present on that occasion as I was on a Parliamentary delegation abroad. This is a matter of great importance to my constituency. That is why I am raising it today.
On that earlier occasion, and on various others on which this matter has been raised, the answer was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), speaking on behalf of London County Council. After reading his answer on that earlier occasion and discussing it with various friends of mine in Dagenham, I have to say that we feel that it does not take the matter further at all. Therefore, from our point of view, it is a thoroughly unsatisfactory answer.
We feel that it is high time that some progress was made in this matter. The Becontree Estate, the larger part of which is in my constituency, was begun by London County Council in 1920 and was mainly built between 1925 and 1933. In other words, most of it was finished over twenty-five years ago. Of the 26,000 houses on the estate, 16,000 are in my


constituency of Dagenham. We have also other L.C.C. estates in Hainault and a West Ham Estate. In other words, taking all the municipal estates not belonging to Dagenham Council which happen to be within Dagenham's boundaries, two-thirds of the houses in Dagenham belong either to the L.C.C. or to West Ham.

Mr. Herbert Morrison: I hope that my hon. Friend will spare a moment during his speech to express gratitude to London County Council for having built all those houses, which probably were a material element in enabling him to become the Member of Parliament for Dagenham.

Mr. Parker: I am fully prepared to acknowledge that, but that was over twenty-five years ago and we have to deal with present and future issues and not merely with the past in this matter.
It is very important that in one municipal area two-thirds of the houses should belong to other local authorities outside that area. It is important because it means that the vacancies in housing accommodation in two-thirds of the area are not filled from our Dagenham housing list but are filled as the L.C.C. or West Ham may decide. At present, on the Becontree Estate about 240 vacancies occur every year. When a son or daughter lives with the parents and the parents die or want to pass over the tenancy, that tenancy is normally passed over to someone who is living in the house at the time of the death or the transfer of tenancy, but there are an increasing number of cases where there are no resident relatives and so, when a vacancy occurs, the house passes to the L.C.C., which decides how the vacancy may be filled, and tenancy is not given to any member of the family at all.
By arrangement between London County Council and the Dagenham and Barking Councils, 100 vacancies a year, up to 1960, are given to people on the Dagenham and Barking Council lists, in the proportion of 68 and 32. That still leaves 140 vacancies a year on the estate which are filled by outsiders from our point of view. In fact, rather more than 140 are filled by outsiders, because all the houses allocated to the two councils are not necessarily within the boundaries of Dagenham or Barking. Therefore, a larger number of houses on the estate

are filled yearly by people from London than the 140 I have mentioned.
As to Dagenham's own housing, 3,500 houses have been built by the council inside its own boundary, of which 2,500 have been built since the war. A further 641 are being built. We are in negotiation for building an estate in Canvey Island to take a number of our people. But our waiting list of 2,500 is increased by at least 200 a year by the sons and daughters of tenants of the L.C.C. estate, although our own housing list has dropped recently because so many local people have given up all hope of getting any kind of house in our area. If we in Dagenham were able to have all the vacancies occurring on the estates inside our boundaries which belong to the L.C.C. and West Ham, the larger part of the present yearly increase could thus be met.
As to the estate in Canvey Island, we have made sensible arrangements with the local authority there that when the houses are built they will be transferred to Canvey Council in due course which will then fill the vacancies. That is the kind of arrangement that ought to be made by the London County Council when it builds houses outside its own boundaries, because it is undesirable that when an area grows up and becomes mature it should remain dominated by the authority which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) has said, helped to bring it to life originally.
A very big social problem arises when there is a community of the type we have in Dagenham, because a very large number of people there, know that they cannot live there permanently and will have to go out to find homes in the new towns and on other housing estates. A large part of the population is continually turning over and the community cannot grow roots. I think that all would agree that in the outer suburbs a large proportion of the population will in any case move out in search of jobs, and housing, but in our estates an abnormally large proportion has to move out because the London County Council fills up its housing vacancies with people from London.
The local people cannot remain, with the result that churches, clubs and other institutions are not built up. There is


no real opportunity to create a community life and to provide a tradition and a sense of belonging to a place which is so important. In the new towns every effort is made to build up that community spirit. The corporations responsible for initiating new towns will hand over their houses to the local authority, and it is the local authority which will run the housing and fill vacancies as they occur.
This problem not only confronts Dagenham and Barking but will, sooner or later, affect all the areas where there are London County Council estates. It is beginning to have an effect everywhere, but in those areas the issue is nothing like as live an issue as it is in Becontree, because most of the estates are fairly new, a high proportion of them having been built since the war.
However, in areas like Harold Hill, in Romford, resentment is caused because when a vacancy occurs it is filled from London and not from the local area. The Becontree Estate was largely completed twenty-five years ago. Many of the people now wanting houses in Becontree were born there or were small children when they first went there; they feel that they are citizen of Dagenham and Barking and should have a chance of having a home there. They resent the houses being given to "foreigners" from London rather than to themselves.
I agree that London County Council has very great housing problems, but I do not see why it should try to solve its serious problems in clearing slums at our expense. That is what we resent. That is what causes strong feeling. While everything should be done to assist London County Council to solve its housing problems, through the expanded towns policy, and so on, we do not see why efforts the L.C.C. makes to try to solve its slum problems should be at our expense. I understand that in all its present negotiations the L.C.C. proposes ultimately to hand over houses in the expanded towns to the local authority there. Why not in Becontree?
It is high time that a national policy was adopted for the L.C.C. and other authorities which have estates outside their own boundaries. Those houses should be handed over after a certain time, say ten years, to the authority on the spot, which would then fill all future

vacancies. Financial problems will arise, but we suggest that the present debt outstanding on the Becontree property should be passed to the Barking Council and the Dagenham Council, thus following the precedents adopted when the health services, fire services, electricity and gas undertakings were taken over.
That would be a reasonable way out of the difficulty. The L.C.C. takes the view that that would not be reasonable in this case because different ratepayers would benefit. The L.C.C. has benefited its ratepayers by finding them houses outside its boundaries, but the responsibility for those ratepayers has then been handed to some other local authority. The L.C.C.'s attitude is no excuse for not being prepared at a later date to hand over the houses as well to that authority to be part of the community there, that new community having the responsibility of looking after the new ratepayers and providing for them in future.
Many of the services which were transferred in the past are now used by different ratepayers than was previously the case. One important hospital in Dagenham belonged to the West Ham Council. It is now used by a fairly wide area including West Ham, but it is used mainly by people from outside West Ham. The same is true of other services, such as electricity, which have been transferred. Many ratepayers, in addition to those who previously owned the undertaking, have shared in its benefits after the transfer of authority. Although in some ways this case is different from the transfer of these other undertakings, there is a very strong case for handing over estates of this kind after a reasonable period—and I suggest that ten years is reasonable—to the authority on the spot.
This is a matter upon which feeling in a community long established, like Dagenham, is becoming very strong. Although we are prepared to acknowledge the work that the L.C.C. did in originally building the estate, we are not a colony. For twenty-five years, we have been a growing community and we have a right to be masters in our own house and to run our own show. There being limited room to build new houses, we have a right to acquire the L.C.C. houses for the future.
Before the war, part of the Becontree Estate at Scrattons Farm was not built


on, but was kept for future development by the L.C.C., either housing or industrial development. Barking Council offered to buy the vacant land from the L.C.C. for building houses and offered a price. The L.C.C. refused to accept and Barking went ahead to try to acquire the land compulsorily. My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South, then Leader of the L.C.C., very wisely suggested a discussion and eventually the estate was handed over for development by Barking Council. That is a very good precedent which might be followed with the Becontree Estate as a whole. It is important to take a commonsense view in the matter.
The Labour Party has, very rightly, drawn up a policy for local authorities to take over private non-owner occupied houses in areas which are largely built up. In Dagenham, we feel that that policy should be applied to estates of other local authorities inside our boundaries as well as to private owners, and we see no reason for differentiating between the two. If the situation has not changed by the time that policy is introduced, we shall certainly want to take over these estates on those lines. We think the Labour Party policy desirable and we think it particularly desirable in this case. It is much better that we should get the matter settled and reach a conclusion here and now and not wait for a few years to have an argument about party policy when we are in power, as we hope to be within a year or two.
The L.C.C. should do something about the Becontree Estate forthwith. This is the area where the issue is most alive, especially in the exceptional way I have mentioned, where, in my constituency, two-thirds of the houses belong to some other authority. The problem applies not merely to Becontree, but to many other L.C.C. estates, although the L.C.C. houses in the other estates form a smaller proportion of the total housing than is the case in Dagenham. In many cases, those estates have been built since the war, but the issue will become a live issue in a few years.
We should deal with the Becontree Estate now and enter into negotiations on other estates to work out a policy that in a reasonable time, say, ten years, after an estate has been completed, it should

be handed over to the local authority on the spot.
Finally, I appeal to the Government, when considering housing policy in future, to deal with this problem on a national level, and not merely in regard to London, and to see that all council estates outside a council's boundaries should be transferred at a particular date to the local authority on the spot. I think that is the only reasonable solution to that problem.

7.18 p.m.

Mr. C. W. Gibson: I think that this is the third time that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) has raised this question on the London County Council (General Powers) Bill, and I must confess that I find it a little unreal. What the hon. Gentleman would do if he succeeded in persuading the House—though he is not moving anything which would bring it about—is to split a very large estate into the control of at least three authorities.
One of the difficulties of the Becontree Estate—incidentally, it was not built by the Labour Party, but by the Tories when they were in control of the L.C.C. —is that it spreads over into the areas of three different local authorities, and if the hon. Gentleman had his way it would be split into three different sets of landlords, whereas at the moment there is one.
I do not think that even the hon. Gentleman himself will argue that the L.C.C. has not been a good landlord there, that rents have not been kept at a very reasonably low figure, that the houses are not very decently maintained, or that repairs and decorations have not been regularly carried out. I know, because for years I was in Dagenham almost every day in the week, and I have not myself sensed any violent revolutionary desire for the change for which the hon. Gentleman suggested.
The fact is that the Becontree Estate was built to house Londoners, and I should like to know what some of the East London families, who are still waiting and have been waiting for many years, will have to say about this attempt to take away nearly 16,000 of the houses on the Becontree Estate, on which at present they have some slight chance when a vacancy occurs of getting into more or less modern houses and living


under much better conditions than those in which they are living at the moment.
This is not merely a question of Dagenham, which I know has its own housing problem. There are 240 people a year waiting to be housed.

Mr. Parker: From the L.C.C. estate.

Mr. Gibson: But the London County Council has a waiting list of 170,000, over 50,000 of which are very urgent cases, much more urgent, from many points of view, than the kind of case which occurs on the Becontree Estate. Many of them live in slum houses, which must be pulled down as soon as possible.
I should have thought that a member of the Labour Party would have said that we should deal with the worst cases first, if we can. It is difficult enough, in any case, in face of the policy now being pursued on the benches opposite, but let us make an attempt to deal with the worst cases first—the slum clearance cases, the gross overcrowding cases, which still exist in London—and where vacancies occur let us give them to these people.
The L.C.C., I know, is always the cockshy for anybody who does not belong to London—although I notice that Dagenham claims that it is a part of the London area, as, in fact, for all practical purposes, it is—but it is quite unfair to suggest that because this estate has been in existence now for twenty-five years, it is time it was handed over—because that is what is involved in this suggestion —to the ownership and legal management of the local authority.
The reference to the new towns is really beside the point. In any case, the terms of transfer of the new towns to the local authorities of the areas in which they have been built have not yet been settled, and nobody is suggesting that they should be settled, because we want to get the new towns built up, not only in regard to houses, but in regard to the creation of virile social communities.
My hon. Friend referred to the community life of Dagenham, and I would admit that even ten years ago it was very difficult to get community life going in Dagenham, but the authority to provide community centres and opportunities for social activities is the local council. The L.C.C. could not do it, except, perhaps,

by providing sites on which club rooms, and so on, could be built. I know of the efforts that have been made to provide additional sites on which club rooms and social centres could be built, and many of them have in fact been built. I therefore suggest that, from every point of view, it would be wrong to split this very large estate into the control of three different local authorities and three different legal ownerships, and, in the process, probably create tremendous difficulties in management.
The hon. Member for Dagenham also referred to transfers. It is quite true that up to a year or two ago the sons and daughters of tenants on the estate received priority in lettings when vacancies occurred. The only reason why that has been stopped is the tremendous and urgent needs of the rest of London—people in Poplar, who are still living in overcrowded and slum conditions, people in Stepney, in Bethnal Green and in Shoreditch. Some have gone from my own part of south London to get decent housing accommodation. I suggest that the hon. Member is advocating something which will be impracticable, which would be to the disadvantage of the tenants on the estate, and which would create all sorts of managerial difficulties if it was carried out.
There is only one other thing I want to say. The hon. Member suggested that we should get together and agree about paying the cost. The L.C.C. has spent many millions of pounds in building this estate. It has probably paid a great many millions of pounds in interest since it started to build the estate. Is all that burden to be left to be borne by the London ratepayer? I suggest that in view of the enormous expense to which London has been put in building not only this estate but other estates outside the L.C.C. area, it is very unreasonable to expect that the London ratepayer should lose the benefit of that when he begins to reach the time when there might be a balance of the account. That time has not yet arrived at Becontree, and it will not arrive for a good many years yet, and that is a factor to be taken into consideration in fairness and justice to the people of London.
The point which I want to emphasise to the House is that the only reason why the L.C.C. has secured powers from Parliament to build outside its own area


is that we in London have a housing problem which is unique, both in size and complexity. Without this power to build within a reasonable distance of London we should never see the end of our housing problems. Whether he realises it or not, if my hon. Friend got his way it would merely result in stopping housebuilding in London, because we are running to the end of the available sites. I am sure that he does not want that.
What may happen in future is another matter, but in the meantime there is no doubt that, on the facts of the situation and the needs of London people for housing accommodation, Becontree is doing very well, and ought not to be interfered with. I hope that the House will for many years refuse to interfere with it.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Delargy: I have a very high regard for the members of the London County Council. My relations with them have been very friendly. They have not always given me what I have asked for, but I have continued to ask. I want to speak very strongly in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) and later to reply to some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson). Before doing so, however, I want to do what neither of them did—to refer to the Bill.
In particular I want to draw attention to Clause 79, which deals with the provision of garage accommodation. The London County Council seeks to delegate to borough councils the power to provide, to let and to maintain accommodation for garaging and parking cars. This is very thoughtful of the county council, and I have nothing whatever against it. What is less thoughtful of the members of the council is that they have made precious little provision for the parking of cars in those areas for which they themselves and not the borough councils are responsible.
In the estate of Belhus Park, in Aveley, several hundred motorists are obliged to park their cars in the streets—a proceeding which is severely frowned upon by the police, as many residents of that estate have found to their cost. I am very happy to know that during this year a parking space will be made available

by the county council, and we are grateful for that. But the need is much greater; the need is urgent. Surely none of us wants to see scores of people hauled into the courts and fined for offences which they cannot possibly avoid—and fined very reluctantly by the local magistrates, who have no option in the matter. I urge my friends who have influence with the London County Council to use it to see that their colleagues act with great speed in this serious matter.
I now turn to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham. I agree with him that before another London County Council (General Powers) Bill is considered in this House the most serious consideration must be given to the exercise of the powers which it already possesses. My hon. Friend referred to this very thorny problem—much more serious than my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham seems to realise—of the future administration of these estates. My constituents are in an even worse position than those of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham. In certain circumstances, provision is made in his constituency for the transfer of tenancies to the sons or daughters of former tenants—sons and daughters who have grown up in those houses. In Thurrock, Belhus Park and Aveley, however, no provision whatever is made for the transfer of these houses to the sons and daughters of tenants who may have left them as a result of death or of removal.
These persons, who are Londoners, are then immediately placed upon the list of the local authorities and, whereas there are only 2,500 applications for houses in the Dagenham constituency, there are upwards of 4,000 in mine. Due to the silly policy of this Government, whereas my local authority was building 350 houses a year it is now building only 100. The problem is becoming quite insoluble. Already we have to house 4,000 people, and now the list will be swollen by these men and women who vacate houses which are the property of the London County Council.
I am not tremendously impressed by the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham. In reply to the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham, he says that one reason this transfer to the local


authority cannot be made is that we are dealing not with one local authority but with three. He has not got that difficulty in regard to Thurrock. He is dealing with one authority only and, therefore, as far as we are concerned, that first argument of his falls to the ground.
He also says that the county council has been a very good landlord. I would not say that it has been a very good landlord; I would say that it has been a fair landlord. He referred to the county council providing club rooms and social centres. There is no club room on the enormous estate at Aveley and no social centre there whatever. In Aveley we have a very young population. It was the policy of the London County Council—an admirable policy—to transfer younger people to this estate, and one can see there more young people than can be seen in most parts of Great Britain. They are very healthy children, growing up in these quite healthy surroundings, but no provision is made for their interest or entertainment.

Mr. H. Morrison: What about the local authority? What has it done?

Mr. Delargy: Some public-minded citizens have got together and have interested themselves in these children. They have laid on courses and healthy recreation for them, but the accommodation they have is pitifully inadequate, and the rent they have to pay for this pitifully inadequate accommodation is far too high. I do not know whether London will assist us. I know that my local authority would co-operate with the county council, and so would private citizens, for the provision of halls, or at least one hall, for these children, who would otherwise be apt to run wild.
Similarly, there has been a discussion in my constituency about the provision of a club room. It has been suggested that a sum of money might be raised by private sources, from the Thurrock Urban District Council and also possibly from the London County Council. So far the reply from the London County Council has not been too encouraging.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham pleaded quite rightly for the London ratepayers. He represents them. But his last argument for the transfer

of these houses was that at long last they are showing a profit.

Mr. Gibson: My hon. Friend has already made two misstatements of fact. First, the County Council has no powers to provide community centres outside its county, although it can help with the provision of sites. On the question of a balance of profit, I said that there will come a day when there will be a balance of profit in these accounts, but that day has not yet arrived—not even in Becontree, where we have been building for twenty-five years.

Mr. Delargy: I do not think that statement has changed the argument very much. I think that the county council built those houses to make provision for its people. Where the authorities secured their sites they were also interested in providing houses for the people. I do not think that either one authority or the other ever sought to build these houses or grant permission for them to be built, in order to make a profit. Therefore that argument should not be used.
Even though we may not oppose the Bill—which, incidentally, is supposed to deal with the Strand, Westminster and a few other insignificant places—before we grant further general powers to the London County Council this very important problem, concerning so many different districts in the south of England, should seriously be considered by this House.

7.40 p.m.

Mr. Albert Evans: I am sure that my hon. Friends the Members for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) and Thurrock (Mr. Delargy) are acting in the interests of their constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham suggested that the Government should reconsider their policy and that out-county estates were a problem to be considered by the Government. I agree that the Government should consider their policy in relation to housing generally. This apparent tug-of-war between out-county estates and the London County Council arises in some measure from the general housing policy of the Government.
Here there is a clash of interest between the housing needs of the people in the county council area and those in the out-county areas. In both places it is a


difficult problem. The question is where lies the greatest need. It is the duty of the London County Council to consider the housing need of the people within its area. I hope that these discussions will not create in the public mind the idea that the London County Council is a great, powerful body—

Mr. Delargy: It is.

Mr. Evans: Yes, it is, but I hope that a picture will not be presented of a great and powerful body opposed to the people of Dagenham and Thurrock. It is nothing of the kind. It is a question of which need is the greater.
As the representative of one of the areas of London, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock that although, as he said, there are in his constituency 4,000 people on the waiting list for houses, in my area there are 15,000. He may have his point of view, but I, too, have mine.

Mr. Delargy: There is one difference between us. I am not seeking to rehouse my constituents in Islington, but my hon. Friend is seeking to rehouse his con-constituents in my constituency.

Mr. Evans: I take the point, but if my hon. Friends says that the people of Thurrock must have consideration I reply that in my opinion my constituents must receive consideration because their problem is greater.

Mr. Walter Edwards: The hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy) would not have a constituency were it not that Londoners have moved out to Thurrock.

Mr. Evans: In this tussle of interests between the outlying estates and the Metropolitan area we can see that the problem of the London County Council is the bigger. It is probably the greatest in the whole of the country, with the exception of Glasgow. I hope that that will be borne in mind.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed.

7.45 p.m.

Captain F. V. Corfield: I beg to move,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that they make provision that, in the exercise of the powers extended by Clause 36, the compensation payable where the London County Council compulsorily acquires land in pursuance of notices to treat issued, or contracts completed, prior to 1st July, 1948, shall be not less than that which would have been payable had the date of such notice to treat or contract been the date on which the Bill comes into force.
I wish to emphasise that it is neither my intention nor my wish to indulge in any form of vendetta, political or otherwise, against the London County Council. My object is to call attention to something which appears to me to be a grave defect in the law relating to the compulsory acquisition of land by local authorities and I hope to find some form of equitable relief. In view of the fact that last Session I introduced a Private Members' Bill designed to substitute current market values for the present criteria as a basis for the calculation of compensation, I think it also right to emphasise that tonight that is not my object.
My action is directed solely to correcting an anomaly which appears to me to amount to a direct contradiction not only of the principles upon which more recent Conservative legislation was founded in 1953 and 1954, but also of the principles upon which the party opposite built their own Act, the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947.
Clause 36 of the Bill seeks to extend the time during which certain land must be compulsorily acquired by the London County Council. Powers to acquire that land were originally contained in a similar Bill in 1937, twenty years ago, and from time to time they have been extended by quite a number of enactments culminating in the London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1954, which extended them to 1st October this year. Clause 36 seeks to extend them to 1st October, 1960, so that even if the present Bill is not passed, or even if this Clause were excluded, these powers would have been in force for twenty years.
As with so many matters of this nature, the delay in acting upon these powers has been due to the war, and certainly nobody would wish to blame the L.C.C. for that. Nevertheless, acting in perfectly good


faith, and certainly with no prior knowledge of the disruption of the powers which was about to happen, the London County Council issued notices to treat as far back as 1939. As hon. Members will be aware, the date of the notice to treat is absolutely crucial in these matters. It is with regard to the conditions upon that date that the compensation payable is calculated. Because these powers have so often been extended, and because so much time has intervened, we find that although some of this land is not actually acquired, compensation is and will be tied to 1939 values by virtue of old notices to treat.
I do not need to elaborate upon the transparent injustice of a situation of that nature, of a system which decrees that compensation be paid on values twenty years out of date, when the intervening period has been one of constant inflation. I am quite certain that that injustice is obvious to all hon. Members and I believe it to be more than obvious to the public. It is true that over the whole of the law relating to compulsory acquisition there is a somewhat similar element of injustice relating to claims under Part VI of the 1947 Act. Although I hope that my hon. Friend may be able to give some assurance on that general problem, it is of course a quite different one from that we are reviewing tonight.
In the first place, in cases under this procedure the intervening period has been very much longer. Therefore, the effect of inflation has been proportionately greater. In the second place, those 1939 values go to the root of the whole claim, whereas in the Part VI procedure the passage of time and inflation normally affect only a part of the claim. We have an entirely anomalous result where 1939 values, in those cases, are perpetuated ten years after Parliament has thought fit to reject them by repealing the relevant provisions of the 1944 Act and passing the Act of 1947.
There is a further anomaly in that, although notice to treat is in no sense a contract, by the procedure we are considering it can be kept alive long after it would cease to be operative under the Limitation Act, 1939. That is a very difficult position to justify. Apart altogether from the purely legal aspects of this question, I think it very questionable whether a situation of this sort is in the interests of sound administration by

local authorities, because that administration must depend to a large extent on the relationship of local authorities to the inhabitants of the areas for which they are responsible. That relationship must be very gravely prejudiced when the law of compensation forces a local authority into action which is manifestly unjust.
I have no doubt that local authorities as a whole, including London County Council, resent finding themselves in that position as much as would anyone else. In my constituency an otherwise thoroughly desirable development was rejected by the local council for the sole reason that it did not feel justified in offering the compensation which the law required it to offer and which seemed to it utterly unreasonable from the point of view of the vendor.
It is perfectly true that this problem is not confined to the L.C.C. It no doubt exists in many other cities and counties throughout the country. It will no doubt be argued that for that reason the proper way of tackling this problem would be by a public Act affecting the whole country. There is a great deal of force in that argument, but its weakness is the inevitable delay before a Government Act could find its way to the Statute Book, and meanwhile injustices continue. For my part, I see very little virtue in suggesting that, because we cannot cure those injustices simultaneously throughout the whole country, we should do nothing about them when we get the chance. If injustices are perpetrated in other areas, the plight of the victims will be no whit better if they know that similar injustices are also occurring in London. On the contrary, if we abolish them in London, London, with its unique position, affords an example and offers hope that that example will be followed speedily. I trust, therefore, that hon. and right hon. Members will not be deceived into the idea that, whatever the injustices, nothing should be done because we cannot remedy them universally throughout the country.
I wish to say a few words about the terms of the Instruction. Its object, primarily, is to abolish forthwith 1939 values as a basis for compensation. I would be the first to admit that there is some difficulty in deciding upon the exact dates at which it is desirable to decide that a particular notice to treat becomes


out of date. There is the attraction of taking the analogy of the Limitation Act and saying twelve years, but if we do that we shall produce the result that in these restricted classes of cases we are denying a certain small number of vendors even the advantages of the 1947 Act after ten years. That does not seem to me to be a very justifiable proposition. I have, therefore, selected the date at which the 1947 Act as a whole came into force, but there again it is arguable that the date on which Part V of that Act came into force, 6th August, 1947, would be equally applicable.
To the ordinary person who approaches this for the first time, as I did, the obvious solution would appear to be to make null and void these old notices to treat, but I understand that would create very considerable administrative difficulties for London County Council. I do not think it is unreasonable, however, that where we have notices to treat which have not been acted upon in ten years, in effect —and the effect of this Instruction will be that—negotiations as to price should start again from scratch.
It is fair to say that this situation does not arise directly from this particular Bill. Even if the Clause were not in the Bill, old notices to treat, I understand, would remain alive even if the actual powers of acquisition had died, provided that the powers to carry out the work remained. Nevertheless, the fact remains that because this Clause is in the Bill we are given the opportunity in this House to rectify what I think almost all hon. Members would agree is an obvious injustice. I hope that all hon. Members, on both sides of the House, will agree that, where we have such an opportunity to rectify injustice, we should be failing in our duty if we neglected to take it.

Mr. H. Morrison: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Am I to take it that the hon. and gallant Member for Gloucestershire, South (Captain Corfield) has moved the Instruction in the form in which it appears on the Order Paper?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): Perhaps I could deal with that question now. The intention is that the Instruction be moved and seconded and, directly after that, there is a manuscript Amendment which Mr. Speaker has approved. I propose to

call the manuscript Amendment as soon as the Instruction had been moved and seconded.

7.59 p.m.

Mr. G. B. H. Currie: I beg to second the Motion.
I have pleasure in seconding the Motion, which has been so clearly proposed by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Captain Corfield). I appreciate that in this matter grave delay has been inflicted on London County Council in carrying out its schemes and following up its notices to treat, which grave delay came through the war. As a result of the 1939 Emergency Regulations and the necessity for turning the effort of this country to warlike matters instead of following our peaceful pursuits, London County Council, with many other local authorities, had to abandon for the time being major development schemes. Many of those schemes were most desirable for the citizens of this great city and the area of London County Council.
I should not like any word I said this evening to be considered as being in any way a reflection on the work of London County Council, but I think that the council might possibly itself be anxious that the apparent injustice which many citizens are to suffer if matters remain as they are should be remedied at the earliest possible moment. They can be remedied if this Instruction receives the approval of the House.
The Instruction is quite simple, as hon. Members will see. All that is being sought is that present-day values shall be substituted for those of 1939. One realises that, where a notice to treat is served, negotiation as to price follows between the professional representative for the person whose property is being compulsorily acquired and the district valuer on behalf of the local authorities. I must say that I have never found district valuers to be warm-blooded, kindhearted gentlemen who offer any price that is in any way greater than they can get away with, but perhaps there is not much relevancy in that observation since, even under the proposed Instruction to the Committee, the price would no doubt be negotiated by the district valuer. But it may be, of course, that hon. Members, having that in mind, will be satisfied that


there is a safeguard, and that a further inflation in price will not take place in consequence of a new negotiation.
I have had brought to my notice an instance which may illustrate this difficulty. It concerns two spinster ladies, the Misses Lyon, who own property in the area which falls within the ambit of this Bill. On 4th February, 1939, they had served on them notices to treat. The price which was negotiated—it has never concluded—was the sum of £700. The value of that property today, as valued by a professional valuer, is over £2,000. In the meantime, of course, these ladies have had to provide for the upkeep of the property.
One knows that rent incomes have been controlled over the years—almost twenty years in this case—whereas, during that interval, the cost of repairs, of maintenance and of rent collection have gone up by between three and four times. Today, if the Bill goes through without an Instruction, these ladies are faced with a situation in which the property is liable to be taken from them at the value at which it stood in 1939. I suggest that that is unjust and inequitable, and is something which should be remedied.
When, same time ago, I introduced the Northern Ireland (Compensation for Compulsory Purchase) Bill I had support from both sides of the House, because its purpose was simply and solely to bring values up to present-day levels. It was an enabling Bill, enabling the Northern Ireland Government to introduce appropriate legislation. Its object was merely to bring the legislation into line with that passed in 1947 by those who now sit on the Opposition Benches, with great wisdom and with a certain degree of generosity, and which they re-enacted for Scotland in the same year in the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act.
I do not want to labour this point. I should have thought that there would have been agreement on it throughout the House. What is sought is the barest equity, and I think that we would all go home feeling much happier if we knew that these little people who are to be affected by this Bill were to receive adequate compensation for the properties which are being taken from them.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: To the Instruction, a manuscript Amendment has been

handed in by the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge), and approved by Mr. Speaker. It is, in line 5, after "1948" to insert:
except where the terms of acquisition have been agreed".

Mr. H. Morrison: Mr. Deputy-Speaker, it may be that the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge) will put it right, but I understood that, in addition to the words to be inserted after "1948," it was proposed by hon. Gentlemen opposite to omit the words "or contracts completed." I did not understand you to read that out, but perhaps that is my fault.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Such an Amendment is not in my hands. If the hon. Member has such a proposal to make it can be considered, but just now I call the hon. Member for Battersea, South to move his manuscript Amendment and, please, to read out exactly what it is.

8.8 p.m.

Mr. E. Partridge: It is exactly as you have read out, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The manuscript Amendment that I submitted was approved by Mr. Speaker. I therefore beg to move, in line 5, after "1948," to insert:
except where the terms of acquisition have been agreed".
I must say that I did not find myself quite in agreement with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Captain Corfield) and my hon. Friend the Member for Down. North (Mr. Currie). My experience of the London County Council has evidently not been as happy as theirs. I regard the London County Council as a rather hard-hearted body, very often dictatorial, sometimes a little unscrupulous—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh"]—and not very honest when it comes to the demolition of the "pre-fabs" on Wandsworth Common; but we must not go into that today.
In order to overcome a difficulty that was seen by my hon. Friends and oneself, one was prepared to make it a little easier for the London County Council to deal with the outstanding and longstanding cases. I do not think the London County Council could grumble very much because in the brief, which I understand has been circulated to all London Members, the L.C.C. states quite


definitely that there are few cases outstanding in which notices to treat were served before August, 1947, and in which the compensation has not been agreed or assessed. Therefore, we start with the fact that there are very few cases involved.
Then the London County Council says that the Instruction is not limited to cases where a notice to treat is outstanding and where terms have not yet been agreed. It applies also where agreement has been reached but where, for one reason or another, completion has not taken place. If that is a legitimate complaint, it is remedied by the Amendment which I am moving. It is quite wrong for the London County Council to bring about a position such as has been outlined by my two hon. Friends, where they are seeking to take possession of land and buildings now but in respect of which the notice to treat was served many years ago, and to pay only the price that was ascertainable in 1939.
The London County Council says that if this is wrong, it is not wrong only in London. [Interruption.] There is an awful lot of competition going on in the Chamber; I hope it will cease. The L.C.C. says that it is not only in London that these injustices are found, if injustices they be, but that this applies all over the country, and that to alter the situation in respect of this Bill would be to discriminate in favour of certain London property owners. It is suggested that the whole of the present law should be amended.
It is probably right that the law should be amended, but when we get an example such as we have before us now, in which we are asked to extend the period until 1960, this is a time when we should say, "We do not give that extension unless the London County Council is prepared to mete out a certain measure of justice to those people from whom the property is to be acquired". When the L.C.C. says that it would not be right without the fullest inquiry to interfere with contracts which have been completed but under which the property has not been conveyed, possibly by agreement for the benefit of the owner, that is a reasonable statement to make and it is overcome by the Amendment.
As there are many Members who wish to speak and I have made my point, I shall say no more.

8.13 p.m.

Mr. Philip Bell: I beg to second the Amendment.
I am delighted to see that hon. Members opposite are interested in this matter, which is apparent from their little unofficial discussions which sometimes disturbed my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge). A little more money may be asked from the London County Council. Those cases in which contracts were completed, the price agreed and notice served will not be disturbed at all. A lot of people made contracts in 1939 and wish they had not. They wish they had put it off until 1940. But if a contract was made with the London County Council for acquiring land in 1939, it is too bad and we must stand by it. The Amendment suggests that we should stand by it and not complain. What happens when a compulsory notice is served and negotiations are hanging fire—

Mrs. Freda Corbet: What is puzzling hon. Members on this side of the House is that while the words "or contracts completed" remain in the Motion it makes nonsense of the words which are sought to be inserted, namely:
except where terms of acquisition have been agreed.
So far as I can see, it makes nonsense of what the hon. and learned Gentleman is saying. We should like some elucidation of the point, because we understood that with the insertion of the new words the old words "or contracts completed" would be deleted.

Mr. Bell: I am sorry that the hon. Lady should think that what I am saying is nonsense. It may be that there is some nonsense wrapped up in these words; I have not got the manuscript Amendment before me. The Amendment does not intend to disturb contracts. There is a lot of difficulty in the case of contracts completed as to whether there has been a conveyance at all, but we are not concerned about that. The contract is made when the price is agreed, and everything has to go through a formality. As I understand this Amendment, it says "Do not upset the contract". I am supporting the Amendment which I understand has


that meaning. If it has not that meaning, I am supporting it as if that meaning were attached to it.
The words
except where the terms of acquisition have been agreed
relate to the contract. I appeal to hon. Members opposite to consider the case which was cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea South (Mr. Partridge) of the two old ladies with the one property in which case the price was never agreed. Therefore, the door was never open. All they say is that no notice was served on their neighbours by accident, that a notice will be served on them after this Bill is passed, and they will get different compensation.
What we are suggesting is that these old ladies should be put upon the same footing as the other people in the same street who have not had their notices—not those who agreed the price, but those who have not agreed the price. This is a particularly hard case because it was, to a certain extent, open to the London County Council to clarify the position. There was, in this case in 1939 and 1940, a dispute as to whether there had been a binding contract, and that dispute was never resolved by any action being taken at all. It looks from Clause 36 as if the L.C.C. is endeavouring to avoid getting that dispute decided by basing itself upon these compulsory powers.
I am sure hon. Members opposite do not want to take advantage of a situation which has arisen accidentally and in which it is a small matter for the L.C.C. to say—and this is the intention which I construed in the Amendment—that where the price was never agreed in 1939 it should be open to agreement now on the basis of the new compensation values which apply now and not those which applied in 1939.
There is no party point about this. This is a question of individual justice which, I like to maintain—when I can get their minds round to seeing it—hon. Members' opposite are just as ready to accept as are we on this side of the House.

8.20 p.m.

Mrs. Freda Corbet: I will, if I may, put very shortly the attitude of the London County Council on this

matter. The hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge) feels that the London County Council has a hard heart, but I assure him that it has not. The London County Council is a law-abiding body, and it is the law that the basis of compensation shall be the 1939 price where the notice to treat has been served before a certain date in 1947.
The County Council has, of course, no option but to pay compensation on that basis. Were it to do otherwise, its members would be surcharged and the Minister of Transport would not pay Road Fund grant on the extra moneys involved. As a corollary to that, should the law be altered at any time in the future, the London County Council would comply with the provisions of that law as it has always complied with the law in the past.
We have before us tonight a proposal that the law which is now a general law. applying to the whole country, shall be altered in respect of one part of the country only and that, therefore, there should, in the future, be one law for London and another law for the rest of the country. In fact, the result would be to discriminate in favour of London property owners as compared with property owners elsewhere.
We take our stand on that. We say that it is most unfortunate that, when the London County Council comes to this House and asks for an extension of time to enable it to carry out vital improvements—road improvements which hon. Members opposite constantly agitate for—and when there is not involved in the General Powers Bill any consideration or proposal whatever as to the basis of compensation, it is not right or proper that hon. Members opposite should seek to alter the law on such a vital matter on so flimsy a pretext.

Mr. Partridge: The hon. Lady says that all the London County Council is asking for is an extension of time for improvements. That is not so. The Council is asking for an extension of time for powers of compulsory purchase of land. We object not to improvements but to an extension of the time for compulsory purchase.

Mrs. Corbet: I have no quarrel with what the hon. Gentleman says. It is necessary to renew the powers to purchase in future. What I am saying is


that the London County Council requires those powers to enable it to carry out these necessary improvements, and in this General Powers Bill there is no proposition whatever about payment of compensation.
Were the L.C.C. coming to the House and asking that it should be permitted to pay less or pay more than is paid elsewhere, it would then be material and relevant to any such Bill that somebody should seek to move an Instruction to the Select Committee to throw out such a proposal. But that does not arise here. While I realise that people like to talk about the things nearest to their hearts, it is a little hard upon the London County Council that, in seeking to carry out the improvements and asking that it might have these powers quickly, it should be forced to worry about time and things of that kind when it comes to this House. However, that is a little beside the point.
Were there just a few outstanding cases which could be taken in isolation, so that the justice which all hon. Members, no doubt, wish to see could be met, we would see no difficulties. But there are, in fact, many difficulties and there are many considerations to be weighed. Those considerations should be weighed by the Minister if the House desires that the basis of compensation in these cases should be altered. He ought to be able to take the best possible advice and have all matters before him. I assure the House that there are many things to be considered. For instance, to give one example which arises often in these cases, property changes hands when the notice to treat is in operation, the price thereby being lowered, and the persons then in possession have got the property at a very low price indeed. As a result of a changed basis of compensation, the public purse would have to pay on an enhanced price to a totally undeserving person. There are those who have already been dealt with on the other basis. Hardship cases, no doubt, would have to be considered. There is also the consideration that this House ought to refuse to enact retrospective legislation in respect of the basis of compensation.
I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will tell hon. Members about the difficulties in the way. I feel that I should leave it to him, particularly as most hon. Members who seem to think that the

thing is so simple are on his side of the House. I hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite will listen to what he has to say. I assure the House that the London County Council will faithfully carry out any changes in the law which Her Majesty's Government and Parliament may think fit to introduce.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I was getting a little anxious, during the hon. Lady's speech, that we were getting away from the small point of the manuscript Amendment. Would it be convenient to the House that we should deal with the manuscript Amendment now, and then come back to the main Instruction?

Mr. H. Morrison: I am wondering whether it would be better, if it be permissible under the rules, if the debate could comprise both the original Instruction and the manuscript Amendment. If I may say so, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, it has been a little inconvenient to have an Amendment obviously coming from the same quarter, indirectly, as the original Instruction, and it has made matters rather confused and a little more difficult to follow. If our discussion were broadened to cover both the Instruction and the Amendment, I think that would be useful. In fact, I thought that it was in that sense that my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Mrs. Corbett) was speaking, legitimately.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I think that we all have the same intention. I had thought that it might be easier to get this small Amendment dealt with and then come back to the main Question on the Instruction, if that were agreeable to the House.

Mr. Morrison: The question is, whether, for our part we would be agreeable to the Amendment being made now.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: We could decide that now.

Mr. Morrison: Then I would be in favour of letting it go. I do not think that it improves the situation, but it would improve the debate.

Mr. A. Evans: The manuscript Amendment seems to contradict the Instruction. I suppose, that for procedural purposes, if the manuscript Amendment were made, we could get on better, but it does not add to the clarity of the debate.

Mr. Archer Baldwin: I am loath to take part in a debate on anything to do with the London County Council, but the trouble which is being debated affects us in the countryside—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: May I interrupt the hon. Member? We are held up by a small manuscript Amendment. If I put the Question of the manuscript Amendment for a decision by the House, we can come back to the main Instruction and the hon. Member will be in order in saying what he wants to say.

Mr. Baldwin: I was going to beg the representatives of the London County Council, a very honourable body, to accept this small Amendment and give a lead to the country. I beg hon. Members opposite to accept this small Amendment, which would right many grievances that might arise.

Question, That those words be there inserted in the proposed Instruction, put and agreed to.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Now, we come back to the Instruction, as amended.

8.30 p.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: We have now accepted the Amendment of the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge). What worries me about it is this. We understood from what he said that he did not want the London County Council to be in a position to have to pay more where the contract had actually been completed.

Mr. Partridge: No—agreed.

Mr. Stewart: Let us get it clear. There are three things: notice to treat, contracts completed and terms of acquisition having been agreed. I presume that those occasions occur in this order of time: notice to treat, agreement reached on the terms of acquisition, and completion of contract. Apparently, by the manuscript Amendment, the L.C.C. is not to be required to pay any more if things have gone beyond the first of those three stages. If the second has been reached—agreement on the terms of acquisition—the L.C.C. is not to be asked to pay more.

Mr. Partridge: Mr. Partridgeindicated assent.

Mr. Stewart: That is the sense of the Amendment. By the Instruction, however, the L.C.C. is to be required to pay

more if the third of those stages has been reached and contracts have been completed. If the hon. Member wants to prevent that, why did he not omit the words "contract completed" in his Amendment? The difficulty for the L.C.C. as the position now stands is that to a layman the Amendment would appear to say two totally contradictory things. A layman might think that the words "contracts completed" are made meaningless by the Amendment which has just been accepted on the suggestion of the hon. Member for Battersea, South.

Mr. Partridge: The hon. Member is putting too narrow an interpretation on "contracts completed". My understanding is that if a contract is completed, it is finished and done with.

Mr. Gibson: Not according to the wording.

Mr. Partridge: The hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) is a half-wit wherever he is. If he would leave me alone, it would help matters. If "contracts completed" is not construed narrowly, there is, in my view, no ambiguity. If the contract is completed, it is finished and done with.

Mr. Stewart: In that case, there seems to be even less reason why the words "contracts completed" should be included. What worries me is that at the moment those words are included and that if that Instruction were carried out, the L.C.C. might for all I know—I am not a lawyer—be required to pay more money even if the contract has been completed. Surely, that is not the intention of the hon. Member for Battersea, South. He would have made his intention clearer had he accepted the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) and drafted an Amendment which cut out the words "contracts completed". That is with regard to the minor Amendment, which is, after all, only a secondary issue. However, the L.C.C. could not be expected to regard with favour an Instruction affecting "contracts completed".
The only other thing I would say is this. As I understand it, after a notice to treat has been served it is still open to the owner of the property to sell that property to somebody else. It may have happened that that property has in fact


been sold and that the benefit of this Instruction is supposed to confer will not be conferred on the person who originally owned the property but on some other party, who has bought the property at a price made low by the fact that there was a notice to treat on it.

Mr. Partridge: Has the hon. Gentleman knowledge of actual cases? There are very narrowly stated circumstances in Clause 36, and it really is not quite fair to quote hypothetical cases when we have actual examples set out in Clause 36. Have these cases the hon. Gentleman is now putting to the House occurred in any of the circumstances set out in paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) in Clause 36? If not, he is being a little unfair.

Mr. Stewart: Not to my knowledge. However, I am working through all the possibilities.
Let us suppose no such cases exist. We are still left with the fact that the owner of property, if notice to treat is served, is in a position, if he wishes and is able to do so, to sell that property to somebody else. What happens then when the notice to treat is served? The notice to treat is served at a given date. The date at which it is served under the existing law determines the basis on which compensation is to be fixed, and a not unreasonable estimate—not a precise one but a not unreasonable one—can be made by the owner of the property of the sum of money he is likely to get for it. It is open to him either to keep that property until it finally passes into the ownership of the public authority or to sell it to somebody else.
The owner who has not sold it to somebody else is simply in the position of somebody who has either decided or for some reason been obliged to keep his property in the form of a certain sum of money. Everybody who has done that has suffered from inflation, and it really cannot be justified that this group of people should be drawn out of the general effects of the movement of prices since 1939.
In 1939 I was obliged, owing to the way in which the war affected my circumstances, to sell the motor car I owned, and I was not able at that time to obtain a particularly good price for it. My motor car was transformed into a given sum of money, just as the piece of property is

transformed into a sum of money by the service of a notice to treat on it. I felt rather hard done by at the time. I was not responsible for the war or the fact that motor cars were a drug on the market in 1939, but I did not come to Parliament asking it to put into my pocket the money that I should have got had I been in the position to hold on to my motor car and to sell it after the war.

Mr. Currie: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that his liabiliity for the upkeep of his motor car ceased when he made that sale in 1939, whereas in the case of the property owner liability for repairs under agreements and so on remained?

Mr. Stewart: I am pointing out that that was so.
What I am saying is that when a notice to treat is served the value of £x is put on the piece of property by the notice to treat. It becomes impossible for the local authorities to say that the sums of money they have had to pay out for property compulsorily acquired, having been once fixed by law, should be altered retrospectively. I think it would be an extremely doubtful principle in general, and if it is to be applied, as proposed in this Instruction, to one local authority and not to the rest, it really will create an impossible situation of injustice, and I do not think either the L.C.C. or any other local authority to which such a proposition were made could be asked to accept it.

8.40 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. R. Bevins): We have had an interesting though short discussion on the Motion in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Captain Corfield). I know that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) will forgive me if I do not follow him in some of his theorising on inflation and its cause and effect, with which I was not very deeply impressed.
I have listened with a great deal of sympathy to both my hon. Friends in the case that they put forward and to the hon. Lady the Member for Peckham (Mrs. Corbet) in support of the attitude of the London County Council. What I have to say I will say very briefly, but


I should like to put the right balance on those arguments.
Clause 36 of the Bill extends, as my hon. Friend said, until October, 1960, the powers of acquisition for certain street works given to the L.C.C. by Acts of 1937 and 1939. Without the successive extensions granted by later Acts the powers would have lapsed some time ago. As I understand, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South, supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Down, North (Mr. Currie) based their objection to this Clause on the fact that in a number of cases—I think that to be precise there are 13—notices to treat were served as long ago as 1939 and for various reasons no progress was made in those cases, and even now the acquisitions have not yet been completed by the L.C.C.
Since compensation on compulsory acquisition is assessed, as has been very rightly stated, in accordance with the statutes and at the values which prevail at the date of the notices to treat, in those cases in 1939, the owners of those properties are liable to be bought out either now, or perhaps next year, the year after, or at some future date on the basis of pre-war prices.
My hon. Friend has complained—and I certainly think with just cause—that this in itself is unjust. I am advised that, in law, the position is that once notice to treat has been served it is open to either party to have the compensation assessed, if necessary by arbitration, and thereby compel completion of the purchase. In the cases that we are discussing tonight, notices to treat were served before November, 1944, and compensation would, therefore, be at the market value current at the date of the notices, as my hon. and gallant Friend rightly said.
This problem is not confined to the 13 cases which concern the London County Council. Quite recently, the Blackpool Corporation announced its intention—it has been published, I think, in one of the periodicals or newspapers—to proceed with the compulsory purchase of properties in pursuance of more than 100 notices which were served before the last war. It may well be that the same sort of situation arises in other parts of the country.
I want to be perfectly candid with the House tonight. At the moment, my right hon. Friend does not know the extent of this problem and the evidence which is before the Ministry at present on this subject is rather sketchy. It may well be—I put it no higher than that—that there are outstanding notices to treat going back many years, not only under local Acts such as we are discussing this evening but also under some general Acts of Parliament as well.
The problem here, as I see it, is essentially one of compensation. It is not a problem of town and country planning. It is a problem of what is the fair amount of compensation which ought to be paid in these cases. As such, it impinges on the wider issues that arise in connection with compensation for compulsory acquisition, issues which are constantly exercising the mind of my right hon. Friend. I am sure that my hon. and gallant Friend the member for Gloucestershire, South is concerned that the general position, as opposed to the London position, should be carefully considered, but today he wants to secure some remedy for these particular cases involving the London County Council and members of the public in London. These, of course, arise under local legislation, and if the House thinks it right to make some special provision for these cases my right hon. Friend will have no objection.
The House must appreciate that if it seeks to make special provision for these cases it cannot avoid creating certain anomalies. The result might well be, for example, that neighbouring owners of land would be compensated on quite different terms. Some owners by way of compensation could receive benefit for betterment resulting from improvements already carried out at the public expense, and some of these anomalies might be very difficult to remedy at a later stage. It is in the nature of things that once we start to remedy injustices of this kind—and I do not deny that there are injustices—it is difficult to decide now far we should go.
I do not know whether my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South wishes to press this Instruction as it stands in its amended form, or whether he would be content that the Committee, knowing the views expressed by the House, should look at the matter and consider what provision


it is best to make in the context of the Bill. I agree that we have no easy task to balance all the conflicting considerations. I emphasise that this is not a simple issue and, although there is in these cases demonstrable injustice, there is a wider aspect to which the House should devote some attention.
So far as the general question goes, and this is part of a general problem, my right hon. Friend—

Mr. A. Evans: The hon. Gentleman said that the Minister is considering this matter. Can he say when the Minister will deal with the admitted anomalies and injustices?

Mr. Bevins: I cannot give the House any indication of the time that is likely to elapse within which my right hon. Friend would be prepared to make a statement on the general problem.
I said that I wanted to be completely frank with the House on this occasion, as indeed on all other occasions. It may seem strange to hon. Members, but cases of this sort have come to the attention of my right hon. Friend only in most recent times. During the last few weeks, however, we have come across these cases not only in London but in Blackpool and in other parts of the country. My right hon. Friend and I are not in a position to know the extent of the problem at the moment, but so far as the general question goes, and these London cases form part of the general question, my right hon. Friend is very willing to look into it to discover both the extent and the character of the problem and later to inform the House of his conclusions.
As I have said, this is not an easy matter and I have tried on behalf of my right hon. Friend to put it to the House in a balanced form.
I summarise it in this way. My right hon. Friend accepts that it is an injustice in the case of this limited instance in the London area. We accept that it happens in the country. It is liable—I put it no higher than that—to inflict hardship on those concerned. This may well prove to be a general rather than a London problem, and although we are perfectly happy that the House should come to its own decision on this matter tonight we shall see that the general matter is considered.

Mr. Partridge: Is my hon. Friend advising the House that there is anything wrong in stopping these injustices now before us, or that there is anything wrong with dealing with them tonight while the matter is being considered by my right hon. Friend and legislation introduced, if necessary? Is he saying that we should not deal with it tonight?

Mr. Bevins: No, I am saying nothing of the sort. What I am saying is that my right hon. Friend accepts that hardship has been demonstrated in these London examples and that, as this is private legislation, it is a matter obviously within the competence of the House of Commons to decide, either to accept or to reject the Motion. Whatever decision is reached tonight, it will be the intention of my right hon. Friend to do what he conceives to be his duty, to look at the general problem on which this case has focussed attention.

8.47 p.m.

Mr. Herbert Morrison: A fair amount has been said on the general issue and it is not necessary for me to deal with it at length, but I ought to mention one or two points which are material to the Motion and to what the Parliamentary Secretary has said. I will come to the Parliamentary Secretary presently. I think that he said something he ought not to have said about the proceedings upstairs.
The delay in this matter is not the fault of the London County Council. There are two reasons for it. One was the outbreak of war, which obviously put paid to this sort of thing for the time being, and the other was that the Minister of Transport, for reasons which could be controversial, but about which I do not wish to start a controversy, has been holding up public improvements because of the Government's desire to restrict capital expenditure.
The ratepayers of London are worth a word of sympathy now and again and I am bound to say that they do not get it from hon. Members opposite, who seem on this, as on the last occasion, determined to put a burden on London ratepayers. When their friends fight the next London County Council election, they will try to make out that they want to get the rates down. We shall have an answer 
If the argument of hon. Members opposite were accepted, the ratepayers of London would be forced to pay more for the two reasons I have given and which are outside their control, and the delay by the Minister of Transport would have put an added burden on the ratepayers of London—that is, if the value of the property had increased. Moreover, the London County Council took its action in good faith, yet it is now sought to introduce an Instruction to the Committee upstairs to take retrospective action altering the law on this matter, although the Council has proceeded on the basis of the law as it existed and is in the middle of the process of moving towards the improvements. Such action would be unfair and improper.
Moreover, this will create inequity. It will create the most alarming differences. Under the law as it is, once the notice to treat has been given, that fixes the date of the basis upon which the compensation takes place. That is the law, and the L.C.C. did not make the law. It was made by this House, and this House has to observe it. Under the terms of this Motion, there is provision for compensation payable where the L.C.C. compulsorily acquired land—
in pursuance of notices to treat issued, or contracts completed,"—
and those words are still there—
except where the terms of acquisition have been agreed.
So we get a series of classes of cases treated on a somewhat different basis. That is not equitable to the individual on the other side of the fence nor to the council on this side of the fence—nor is it in the public interest.
The Amendment to the Motion makes the situation even more ridiculous and absurd than it was in the first instance. That is why I did not object to the Amendment being made to the Motion. I thought that it would be easier to defeat the Motion in those circumstances than otherwise. These inequities will arise. Some of this land or property will have been sold since 1939, presumably on the basis of a restricted value under the existing law. What is to happen about compensation? All sorts of things may have happened. An increase in the rent received may have occurred and, on the other hand, there may be circumstances in

which there was no change of ownership and no increase in rent.
Although there may be points to argue as between one case and another, the House really ought not to go in for an Instruction which, if anything, increases the inequity of treatment. We have a situation in which the general law is as has been stated. With great respect, I say that the House of Commons has no right to jump in and amend the law against a particular local authority, not even the L.C.C.—even if it may not be as popular with hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite since it has had a Labour majority as it was when it had a Conservative majority—though it was not very popular then.
This sort of thing ought to stop. The last time a Money Bill was before the House, I said that the House was trying to transform itself into the Finance Committee of the L.C.C. Tonight, the arguments were so thin and the Instruction so silly that I began to wonder whether we were not in danger of transforming ourselves into a speakers' class. Really, the House of Commons ought to take this matter seriously, and not go in for a kind of half-larks, have a bit of a night out and a bit of fun, when we are interrupting a debate on a really important and serious subject.
I submit that this is the general law, and that neither the House nor a Committee upstairs has a right to amend it against a particular local authority, and that, therefore, this ought not to be done. There are arguments of equity, and I am not necessarily accepting—neither are the promoters—the assumption of the Parliamentary Secretary that there is such grave injustice here that we have a prima facie case to amend the law. We have to consider the public purse as well. I agree that we must consider the financial interests of individuals, but I do not assume as the Parliamentary Secretary does, that there is an argument for a general amendment of the law.

Mr. Bevins: I did not say that at all. I made it clear that I thought it had been demonstrated that probably in this particular case of the L.C.C. there had been hardships to the individuals involved. I also added that there was evidence that the same sort of thing is going on in different parts of the country, but I certainly did not say as a generalisation


that it was established throughout the country that what was going on led to hardship.

Mr. Morrison: I am sorry, but I do not understand the hon. Member. If he is arguing that in the case of the Misses Lyon, who were mentioned in the course of the debate, and in the case of somebody in the County Borough of Blackpool—which case was reported in the newspapers—compensation has to be adjusted, either because it has been brought to the notice of the House of Commons or because there has been publicity about it, he is creating more trouble. We cannot adjust cases for compensation in that light, under the law.
It would be a nuisance if the law were changed so that these matters were dealt with as if they were public assistance cases. We have to have general principles in the law, and they will sometimes produce things which are a little worrying. We may have to consider those next time, but I do not think from the debate so far that a prima facie case for an amendment of the law has been made out.
The Parliamentary Secretary said something else which alarmed me. He will probably tell me that I am wrong, but I understood him to say—as did a number of my hon. Friends—"Please will you be so good as to withdraw the Instruction and leave it to the Committee upstairs to see whether it can amend the Bill in such a way as to meet the point you are getting at?" Is not that an incitement to the Committee upstairs to do the very thing that we are objecting to, namely, make an exception of the London County Council?
If the Instruction is to be withdrawn, or if the House defeats it, whichever it may be, it is not for the Minister then to say to the Committee, "Examine the Bill," almost as if the Instruction had been carried. That is not paving proper respect to the House of Commons, or having proper regard for equity as between one local authority and another. For those reasons I hope that we may now peacefully proceed to the point of hon. Members withdrawing the Instruction, so that we may resume the important debate which was being carried on before tins one began.

9.2 p.m.

Mr. Archer Baldwin: The right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) said that hon. Members on this side of the House were trying to create hardship for London ratepayers. On the contrary, we are endeavouring to see that London ratepayers do not treat individuals unfairly in acquiring property at 1939 values. This applies all over the country, and not merely in London. If that property had been acquired in 1939, at 1939 prices, the vendors of the property would have been able to invest their money in equities, and they would have increased in value fairly substantially.
We say that if property is wanted today by the London County Council or any other county council it should pay a fair value for it, and should not go hack to 1939 prices.

9.3 p.m.

Mr. Walter Edwards: I cannot add much to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) has said, but it really is becoming common in this Chamber for hon. Members opposite to attack the Labour-controlled London County Council as much as they possibly can. They are doing it mainly because it is Labour-controlled. We find them coming from as far away as Northern Ireland and Gloucestershire.

Captain Corfield: If the hon. Member will read my speech in HANSARD tomorrow he will see that I was very careful not to attack the London County Council at any stage. I approach this matter purely upon the general principle of 1939 values. If the hon. Member wishes me to attack the London County Council, however, I will certainly do so later.

Mr. Edwards: I listened to the hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech, so I do not need to read it in HANSARD tomorrow. It was an indirect attack upon the London County Council. It is rather strange that when other county councils bring Bills to this House—especially when they are Conservative-controlled councils—we never have any complaints from hon. Members opposite.
I am rather annoyed at the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary, who is trying to sit on both sides of the fence. He


has the audacity to say that whatever happens tonight, whether this Instruction be accepted or not, it is the view of his right hon. Friend that the Committee should pay attention to what has been said by hon. Members on the other side of the House, not by hon. Members on this side.
Surely the Parliamentary Secretary and his right hon. Friend have sufficient power within the Government that if they feel the present compensation law is not good enough for their property-owning friends, they can persuade the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House to introduce legislation and not wait for an attack upon another London County Council (General Powers) Bill.

Mr. Baldwin: It would be too late, then.

Mr. Edwards: Hon. Members opposite are always too late. They were too late with the Shops Bill. There may be legislation next year.
The Parliamentary Secretary should have been honest and said that his right hon. Friend was so impressed by the case presented by the hon. and gallant Member for Gloucestershire, South (Captain Corfield) and the hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Currie) that he felt it should go into the next Gracious Speech; and that not only should the London County Council pay increased compensation, but every other local authority, including those in Northern Ireland, should do so as well.
Most of the debate has been nothing less than an attack on the London County Council from behind a "smoke screen". I hope that the Government will realise that in future when such attacks take place it is their duty to defend local authorities and not provide opportunities for them to be attacked.

9.7 p.m.

Mr. A. Evans: I agree with my hon. Friends that there is a certain amount of prejudice against the London County Council on the part of hon. Members opposite. But I acquit the hon. and gallant Member for Gloucestershire, South (Captain Corfield) of any such intention. He did not suggest that the London County Council was animated by any desire to be unfair. I think that the majority of hon. Members opposite would not accuse the London County Council of wishing to be unfair over such a trivial matter, because the amount involved here is not much.
The Parliamentary Secretary surprised me by saying that this matter was receiving attention and was occurring in various parts of the country. He said that it was a complicated matter, requiring the attention of his right hon. Friend, and that while the matter was under consideration he was advising that this Instruction might be accepted and this local authority dealt with piecemeal, at the same time as his right hon. Friend was dealing with the matter—

Mr. Bevins: The hon. Gentleman must not say that. I said that this was private legislation and that it was for the House of Commons to decide whether to accept or reject it.

Mr. Evans: It seemed to me that the Parliamentary Secretary said that his right hon. Friend had the matter before him, that there were other cases in other parts of the country, and that, while the Minister was considering them, he had no objection to this Instruction being accepted. It seems a rather irresponsible position for the Minister to accept the problem as being a general one and, at the same time, to have no objection to this being dealt with piecemeal.

Question, as amended, put:—

The House divided: Ayes 75, Noes 76.

Division No. 162.]
AYES
[9.10 p.m.


Agnew, Sir Peter
Burden, F. F. A.
Farey-Jones, F. w.


Armstrong, C. W.
Butcher, Sir Herbert
Glyn, Col. R.


Baldwin, A. E.
Chichester-Clark, R.
Green, A.


Barber, Anthony
Cooke, Robert
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)


Barter, John
Corfield, Capt, F. V.
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Currie, G. B. H.
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Deedes, W. F.
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel


Bishop, F. P.
Doughty, C. J. A.
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)


Bossom, [...] Alfred
Drayson, G. B.
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount


Bowen, E. R. (Cardigan)
Elliott, R. W. (N'castle upon Tyne, N)
Hobson, John (Warwick &amp; Leam'gt'n)


Braine, B, R.
Errington, Sir Eric
Holland-Martin, C. J.




Hornby, R. P.
Marples, Rt. Hon. A. E.
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.


Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Mathew, R.
Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)


Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.
Mawby, R. L.
Spence, H. R. (Aberdeen, W.)


Hylton-Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Harry
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr, S. L. C.
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm


Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Nairn, D. L. S.
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Kershaw, J. A.
Nicolson, N. (B'n'm'th, E. &amp; Chr'ch)
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Leather, E. H. C.
Oakshott, H. D.
Vane, W. M. F.


Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)
Page, R. G.
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Linstead, Sir H. N.
Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Wade, D. W.


Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Pike, Miss Mervyn
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Longden, Gilbert
Pitman, I. J.
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Wills, G. (Bridgwater)


McKibbin, A. J.
Pott, H. P.



Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Redmayne, M.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.
Russell, R. S.
Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Partridge.




NOES


Ainsley, J. W.
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)
Parker, J.


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Lianelly)
Parkin, B. T.


Baird, J.
Hannan, W.
Pearson, A.


Bence, C. R (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Hayman, F. H.
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Blackburn, F.
Hobson, C. R. (Keighley)
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)


Blenkinsop, A.
Holmes, Horace
Reeves, J.


Blyton, W. R.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Brookway, A. F.
Hunter, A. E.
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Short, E. W.


Champion, A. J.
Jeger, George (Goole)
Shurmer, P. L. E.


Coldrick, W.
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn &amp; St.Pncs, S.)
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, David (The Hartlepools)
Slater, J. (Sedgefield)


Crossman, R. H. S.
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Sparks, J. A.


Darling, George (Hillsborough)
King, Dr. H. M.
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)


Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
Lawson, G. M.
Stones, W. (Consett)


Deer, G.
Logan, D. G.
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.


Delargy, H. J.
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Dodds, N. N.
Mahon, Simon
Thornton, E.


Dye, S.
Mayhew, C. P.
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Mikardo, Ian
Wheeldon, W. E.


Edwards, W J. (Stepney)
Mitchison, G. R.
Wilkins, W. A.


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Moody, A. S.
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Fernyhough, E.
Morrison, Rt. Hn. Herbert (Lewis'm,S.)
Woof, R. E.


Fienburgh, W.
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)
Yates, V. (Ladywood)


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)



Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Pargiter, G. A.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. Hastings and Mr. Gibson.

MENTAL ILLNESS AND MENTAL DEFICIENCY (REPORT)

Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question,
That this House takes note of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency.

9.18 p.m.

Sir K. Joseph: When I was interrupted I was making the cryptic statement to the House, "Not only is there Percy but there is Piercy," and I feel that I should go back and explain what that succinct remark was intended to mean.
On mental health we have had a debate which was enlivened, just before the last interruption, by a speech of great practical humanity by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and I am sure, judging from the references of all hon. Members who have spoken to the Royal Commission Report, that the whole House must have been delighted by the wide-ranging sympathy and the adventurous and enterprising approach that my right hon. Friend, on behalf of the Government, brought to this problem of mental illness.
I was very sorry indeed to miss the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, but I gather both from him and from the Home Secretary that the House has had the assurance that the Government is already in consultation with local authorities, and we can wish for no further token of their earnest intent to take this Royal Commission Report extremely seriously.
Each Member who has spoken in this debate today has concentrated, so as to enable other Members to speak, on one facet and I propose to do the same. The subject on which I wish to concentrate is that of the local authorities. The Royal Commission Report wishes there to be an enormous expansion in the responsibilities of local authorities. So much of the local authorities' functions and powers are under discussion today—the discussion of boundaries and of finance—that one should try to draw the implications of this Report in ample time for them to be considered before consultations with the local authority representatives are in full swing.
There was a time when local authorities were responsible not only for social but

for medical services in connection with mental health. Since 1948, the hospitals have been separated from the local authorities. The local authorities have had power but not obligation to carry out mental health community services. Some of them have done a great deal of work in the mental field but most of them have been chary even of admitting mentally ill people into Part III accommodation so that not only have the hospitals and mental institutions been left with all the medical care, but they have had even more social care than one might have expected because of the lack, in most cases, of Part III help from the local authorities.
As a result, the hospitals have had to provide beds for people who, had they had reasonable homes to go to, would have been sent out of hospital to their homes, and the hospitals have as a result not been able to concentrate upon the cure of people who are mentally ill, with all those rapidly expanding weapons of treatment of which many hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken today.
One of the results of this is the strong recommendation by the Royal Commission that local authorities should play a full part in community care. Some Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Walter Elliot) and the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson), have expressed doubts whether local authorities are sufficiently equipped for this mammoth job of providing the community care that is necessary. It was at this point that I tried to remind the House that there is not only a mammoth job of dealing with mental disability but that we have recently heard in this House the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour announcing the Government's acceptance in principle of the Piercy Report on the rehabilitation of the disabled. That Report recommends an enormous expansion of community care by the local authorities for all aspects of non-mental disability as well. The local authorities, therefore, really are facing a revolutionary expansion of their activities.
It may be of interest to hon. Members to realise that in the Percy and the Piercy Reports local authorities are recommended to run clubs, workshops—


diversionary, occupational and sheltered—hostels for all sorts of disabled people—mental and physical—homes, domiciliary services for all disabled people, whether mental or physical; and they are recommended to provide community care for mildly mentally ill, whether those mildly mentally ill have never been to a mental hospital because they are not ill enough, or whether they have been to a mental hospital and have recovered from their acute phases.
The local authorities are recommended to provide community care for the stabilised severely sub-normal, that is, the mentally defective, who are now to be called the severely sub-normal. One must remember that local authorities have, for many years, carried a great burden of looking after mental defectives; and in fact there are at this moment no fewer than 75,000 mental defectives under the supervision of local authorities—more than 50 per cent. of the total mental defective population of the country.
Local authorities are also to look after mild psychopathic cases. They are to look after the community care for the senile, and the elderly eccentrics who have no homes of their own, and a whole range of others whose disability is not in the least mental, who are covered in the very long and detailed Report of the Percy Commission.
No one doubts the good will of local authorities. No one doubts the skill of their officers and the interest of their citizens, but this is a mammoth task, and we should ask ourselves whether this revolutionary increase of local responsibility and power can be satisfactorily managed quickly, or whether we must be content to move slowly and securely, building up the staff and buildings and the co-operation which will be so essential.
The matter is complicated by the fact that not all local authorities necessarily agree with the recommendations of the Percy Commission. The County Councils' Association, for instance, thinks that the hostels recommended by the Commission should be run by hospitals, not by the local authorities at all. It seems to me that the hospital's job is one of cure and not of care, that is, unless the care involves constant nursing and individual treatment, and that the Royal Commission

was right in recommending that the hostels should be run by the local authorities. But it will be all the harder to get local authorities to carry the Commission's recommendations into effect if some representatives do not even agree with what is recommended.
Once again, we come back to the basic necessity for close co-operation between all the bodies concerned. The education, child care, welfare and health departments of local authorities and the hospitals must all co-operate to a degree to be found only in very few, very progressive, local authorities. Experiment will be absolutely vital, but it is no good experimenting, however successfully, if other local authorities do not copy. I fully accept the recommendation of the Royal Commission that a system should be developed, possibly under the aegis of the Minister of Health, to disseminate the experience gained as a result of experiment.
Here, once again, I mention the suggestion that this country today may very well need, with so much expansion in the social services, a social service staff college or a local authority staff college, at any rate a staff college of some sort which could not only run courses and introduce the best ideas for wide publication, but could also produce an authoritative series of journals and bulletins which will compare—not as one sees done superficially in the Press, but really compare—the achievements, the problems and the statistics of one authority with those of another. Of course, I am not forgetting that the Minister of Health will retain power of inspection, but the only security and safeguard to ensure a high, and rising standard in the local authority service will be provided by the interest of the public, and the interest of the public must depend upon thorough and systematic information.
I suggest that there are several things which the public and the local authorities have the right to know now. I take my examples from the Royal Commission's Report. First, the Minister of Health should make it clear, by an Amendment or authoritative interpretation of Section 28 of the National Health Act and Section 21 (8) of the National Assistance Act, that the local authorities have power to provide residential accommodation and that they have power


to admit the mentally ill into Part III accommodation.
Next, I hope that, in the discussions with the local authorities which are going on, consideration will be given to correlating local authority boundaries with those of regional hospital authorities, so that the teams which will have to cooperate in this great, new expanding experiment will be more or less the same, and not an ever-changing permutation of different individuals dealing with different small sections of each region.
First, and most important, however, is finance. The Percy Commission involves very heavy new financial cost but I believe that in the long run, there will be a commensurate financial saving. It may well be—and I really believe this—that once those who can be released from hospital to homes can go there and be looked after by local authorities, the mental hospitals and institutions will be able to shrink to a size determined by what one might call the acute mental case load level. It will, in addition, be possible for the mental hospitals to give a far better service to the country, concentrating upon preventive medicine, which we all desire, and working upon the cure and treatment of their patients with the modern methods which, as we all know, are becoming ever more available. It cannot be concealed that before this is possible, much money must be found for expanding the staff and the buildings of local authorities.
I particularly ask my hon. Friend to bear in mind the importance of drawing to the attention of the Committee in his Department which is now considering the question of social workers the importance of covering the requirements of social workers involved in both the Percy and the Piercy Reports. I very much hope that with the long-term savings in mind, neither the taxpayer nor the ratepayer will grudge the temporary burden which is involved in building up the community services which will be necessary before the hospitals and, therefore, the central Budget can be relieved.
There is no doubt whatever that the Percy Report has shown an indubitable way to bring great benefit to large numbers of the population. It seems to me, and, I am sure, to all hon. Members, that we must find the money for the research,

The staff, the buildings and the services so that we can achieve the long-term saving, not only in money, but also in human lives, that will be represented by this revolutionary expansion in the sphere of mental health.

9.32 p.m.

Mr. Norman Dodds: I begin by echoing the feelings of my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew), who deplored the fact that during twenty-seven years there had been only two debates on this important subject and that the debate this evening was interrupted by a Private Bill, which meant that those hon. Members who spoke before seven o'clock had to curtail their remarks. I believe, however, that there will be many more opportunities in future to deal with this subject.
We have had a very good speech from the Leader of the House, in which he said that this matter is being treated seriously. The Parliamentary Secretary began his speech by saying that there was need for consultation and that the various people were being consulted before measures of the kind we are considering could be brought into force. Everybody agrees with that. I join, also, those who have congratulated the members of the Royal Commission for the excellent job that it has done.
I share the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) that there is need to exercise special care concerning the recommendations for psychopathic patients. There is no doubt—I wish I had time to dwell on this at length—that since 1929, without any change in legislation, there has been a tendency to bring into mental deficiency and to certify more people, including those who, by reason of their intelligence quotients, should never have been sent to mental institutions.
There must, therefore, be alarm at the statement in paragraph 17 of the Royal Commission's Report:
… Psychopathic patients, or patients with psychopathic personality. We use the term 'psychopathic personality' in a wider sense than that in which it is often used at present …
In that respect, we need to have a great deal more information about what is proposed, because many people can be brought into the net, which means that the liberty of the individual is endangered as a consequence.
One of my hon. Friends disagreed with the hon. Member for Carlisle (Dr. D. Johnson) about the recommendations being revolutionary. They are so revolutionary that they really say, "Scrap the present Jaws and start again." In the debate today, I have found very much complacency about what is now going on under the mental laws. I wonder whether hon. Members who have spoken would have made different speeches if they had read all the evidence which was submitted to the Royal Commission by some of the most reputable organisations in this country, evidence which cannot be thrust aside as being irresponsible.
I took the trouble to read through the 31 booklets containing Minutes of Evidence. That evidence, as anyone who reads them can see, is of dark blots on our national life, blots caused by what is happening in the mental hospitals and mental institutions. I do not think that the Parliamentary Secretary can deny that the organisations which gave testimony before the Commission included some of the finest authorities in the country.
While I acknowledge that much has been done, and is being done, and that in many respects progress has been made, I still think that the public conscience would be really aroused by this evidence, and that, if it were to be published, so that the public could judge of the conditions, it might well be that, in consequence, the necessary co-operation between the local authorities and the public would be forthcoming.
There is, for instance, the evidence of the Fountain Hospital Management Committee, which shows that children were certified as mental deficients although they were not mental deficients, and that they were so certified simply so that they might get necessary care. There was the evidence of Dr. Hilliard, who mentioned a baby only two weeks old, and stated that authorities would rather the children were not certified. There is the evidence of the National Spastics Society:
There are rather a frightening number of cases all over the country where that has happened.
Further evidence the Society gave was:
We do know, for example, that in one mental hospital there are 300 spastics, about a quarter of them children and only about a third of them are really certifiable; the rest are in need of institutional care.

There are children who were certified as mental deficients, and then it was found that they were suffering from deafness and ought not to have been certified at all.
It is an impossible task, in the few minutes one has in this debate, to go through all the evidence, but there is much to show that it is necessary to certify people in order that they may have necessary attention for other ills—people who are not mentally deficient and are not insane.
Among the Royal Commission's recommendations there is a recommendation that I should have thought could have been introduced without legislation, and one which should be introduced immediately. In page 11 of its Report the Commission says:
Except in emergency, there should always be two medical recommendations at the time of admission to hospital or guardianship, at least one of which should be given by a doctor experienced in the diagnosis or treatment of medical disorders, and one if possible by a doctor who already knows the patient.
What a contrast that would be to what happens today. There are about 2,000 patients who, under the mental illness laws, are certified by one doctor, to one who is certified by two doctors. A justice of the peace will sign a certificate who has not any special knowledge of mental illness, who has not seen the patient before, or who has seen him perhaps only once and then for only three or four minutes. Had I time I would read the evidence which shows that they go round certifying them and then picking them up a few days later.
Then there is the case of the old people. What a scandal that is. Document after document as well as the evidence before the Royal Commission shows that there is a large number of old people who ought not to have been certified at all. One of my hon. Friends—the only pyschiatrist in the House—cited the case of a person aged 84. The testimony before the Royal Commission shows that persons of 89, 90 and, in one case 100 years old have been certified and taken into mental hospitals as insane. There are cases of those who are being detained unnecessarily in mental hospitals.
There is also testimony by the Federation of Hospital Employees that 20 per cent. of the people in mental institutions today could be allowed out at once if


There were places to which they could go. [An HON. MEMBER: "Oh."] That is the point I am making, that there are people in mental institutions and hospitals today who are certified either as mental deficients or insane solely because we have not provided other places to which they could go. It is a shame that that should happen, and it is essential that, at the earliest possible moment, we should get down to this problem with a view to really awakening public conscience so that this sort of thing may be remedied.
I should like to quote in that respect the evidence of the National Association of Local Government, Health and Welfare Officers:
In Kent, I have dealt with 450 cases in the last five years and 30 per cent. have been in the over-65 age group. There has been no alternative but the mental hospital for them with the consequence that the hospital which serves our area is overcrowded with senile dementia cases, many of whom could be adequately dealt with in other accommodation if it was available, and if there were statutory provision for it. We think it is dreadful having to certify people of 65, 70, 80, 90 and, as I did in one case, 100 years of age.
It goes on to indicate that 75 per cent. could go to chronic sick hospitals, 20 per cent. to senile dementia hospitals with no certification and only 5 per cent. need to be certified as acute psychotic problems. It is clearly indicated in the Report of the Royal Commission that if the recommendations were carried out it would mean that thousands of people who are now deprived of their liberty in mental hospitals and mental institutions would not be deprived of it in that way.
When it is said that the statements that are made are sensational—and the two Front Benches get together and deplore what the Press has done about individual cases—I would remind them that in 1953 much of the impetus which resulted in the setting up of the Royal Commission was the result of the case of Janet Pritchard, and one only needs to look at HANSARD after the summer of 1953 to see that there were about 40 Questions on the Order Paper about that case.
It is true that the Royal Commission was set up because of the antiquity of the existing mental illness and mental deficiency regulations, and because of the contrast between the spirit which has permeated this legislation and that of other social service legislation. It is also a fact

that much impetus was given to it by the Press and others who were dissatisfied with what was going on.
In conclusion, I would quote what an hon. Member said earlier. Now that, at last, there is a blaze of light, I can only hope that that blaze will be kept going until the public conscience is aroused and that we will get down to dealing with this terrible and, I know, difficult problem and realise that many of these things need not happen. I am pleased that the Royal Commission has recommended that the number of people certified should be kept to the minimum, because many of us who have had experience of this know that once people have been certified it is an absolute nightmare to get any action taken. I hope that in future there will be many more occasions on which I shall be able to put my case very much better than I have been able to put it in the few minutes allowed to me tonight.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Percy Shurmer: I am sorry that there is so little time left to make any observations on this subject, but I have been kindly allowed five minutes by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Blenkinsop). I was a member of three hospital committees from 1927 until the coming of the National Health Service. Since then I have been a member of one committee. Therefore, I have had thirty years experience. It should be stated in defence of the work done by the mental hospitals in difficult conditions that there has been a wonderful improvement in that time.
When I first became a member of a mental hospital committee the three hospitals were known as the Rubery, Hollymoor, and Winsor Green Asylums. Now one is called the All Saints' Hospital and the other two are named hospitals. People who have relatives in them no longer look upon them as mental asylums. We all know about the amenities provided in these hospitals and about the open doors. It is wrong for people to make rash statements and for the Press to report them, with the result that men and women are dissuaded from going to these hospitals as voluntary patients. We are getting a large percentage of voluntary patients in our hospitals today, and they are being cured.
I welcome the Commission's recommendations but, quite frankly. unless we act quickly the Report will be useless. There is a great deal to be done and a large amount of money must be spent. There was 38 per cent. overcrowding in All Saints' Hospital last year. The position is easier now, but the work of the doctors and nurses is still being made extremely difficult by the lack of accommodation. Mental hospitals have many patients who are no longer under active treatment Old people have been sent to mental hospitals and their homes have been broken up when they ought to have been sent to what are called "half-way homes."
There should be far more provision of that kind for these senile, infirm patients. This would relieve overcrowding in mental hospitals, but if the local authorities are to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission in providing half-way homes and more aftercare, some guarantee should be given of financial help from the Exchequer. The whole burden cannot be borne by the local ratepayers.
We must provide for the same amenities and care in mental hospitals as we provide in general hospitals. We should realise, also, the difference between the work of nurses in mental hospitals and that of nurses in general hospitals. I have just spent six weeks as a patient in Westminster Hospital. I know the wonderful work done by the staff there, but there the work is not as hard as that of the nurses in mental hospitals. It is brave of girls to volunteer to become nurses in mental hospitals and some adequate recompense should be given to them.
We should be quite honest about it and openly admit that many of our mental hospitals have been long out of date. The mental hospital on whose committee I serve celebrated its centenary recently. It was built by the architect who built the nearby prison. Many of our mental hospital buildings are very like prisons, but their committees and their staffs of doctors and nurses are doing their best to make them as decent as possible in the most difficult circumstances. The sooner we start to spend the money to build better hospitals and pull down the old ones and to provide accommodation for the aged and infirm, the sooner we

shall be better able to deal with matters of mental health.
I hope that, if not tonight, we shall soon be told that the Government will act on the Report of the Royal Commission and spend a little more money on mental instead of on general hospitals.

9.50 p.m.

Mr. A. Blenkinsop: We are all very glad to have heard the voice of my hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer) because of his very long experience in some of this work. We are all very sorry that the Minister has not been able to be present, but the Parliamentary Secretary can be happy that the Royal Commission Report has received such a very encouraging reception from both sides of the House. It is worth commenting that the debate is taking place because the Opposition made time available for it, not in order to prosecute any vendetta against the Government, but to see that feelings were ventilated and that every encouragement was given to the Government to move forward on the basis so well provided by the Royal Commission.
I am very glad indeed that so much attention has been paid by hon. Members on both sides of the House to the financial issue and to the responsibilities which we all hope will be undertaken in future by local authorities. Unless we can get local authorities to agree to take over some of these responsibilities for the welfare and care particularly of the elderly patients and also of some of the younger ones, it is impossible to see how we can make real progress towards the level of treatment which we know is possible today and which we are all eager to provide but which it is physically almost impossible to provide so long as nurses generally have to labour against crowded and difficult conditions.
We want to see a move towards a new provision for welfare and care by local authorities as a way of enabling hospitals to do the work which we are sure hospitals should do, in order that nurses can undertake the modern forms of care which are possible only if they are dealing with relatively small groups of patients.
I have seen all too often the difficulties in which a hospital has been placed when the authorities have been trying, as many


a hospital medical superintendent has said, to "dig a hole" in the hospital in which decent modern treatment can be provided. That inevitably means overcrowding even more seriously one part of the hospital in order to make modern treatment available in some corner.
Some mental hospitals and some institutions have been more fortunate than others in the space they have had available and in what they have been able to do; but in every one in the country, even in the most modern, the authorities have had to face difficulties which the community would not have tolerated in general hospitals. I remember saying, about three years ago in a general debate on the Health Service, that I thought that it was a sin and a shame that we should tolerate spending so little on the mental hospitals that the rate of expenditure per patient in the mental hospitals was so very much below that in the general hospitals. To me that was merely a general indication that the level of treatment in mental hospitals was relatively very low.
We are all glad to see the great developments now becoming possible. The Report suggests ways in which they should be not only possible, but actually take place. A great deal is left upon us in this House, whether we will approve and insist upon the expenditure on the local authority services which will be needed.
A point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) was not taken up sufficiently, and I want to refer to it now. Some of us are sincerely anxious about the Government's position in regard to the financing of local government in relation to this specific issue. It will be very unfortunate if we are to start our encouragement of the local authorities to develop these services at the very moment of time when specific grants are to be discontinued and only general grants for all purposes are to be made available to the local authorities. I sincerely urge the Parliamentary Secretary to make that one of the early matters that he discusses with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, who will be responsible for financing local government affairs and for putting forward proposals very shortly in this House.
I am sure that we are all enormously eager to see the proposals which are being put forward take shape; but we recognise the expenditure involved. There is some truth in the point made by one hon. Member opposite that expenditure will be increased initially, though we can hope for real savings later on, but it is important that we should look clearly at this problem. In so far as we succeed in improving the scale of treatment in our mental hospitals, it is likely at any rate that expenditure per patient in these hospitals will go up. We must face that fact and welcome it as a sign that the work which we all want to see done is being done. It should not frighten us off.
The mere fact that we hope that we shall be able to move many of the more elderly and other patients out of our mental hospitals, and also out of our institutions as well, to which one of my hon. Friends quite rightly referred, does not automatically mean a reduction in expenditure in these institutions and hospitals if the improved care that we are eager to provide is made available at the same time.
This can only be an initial debate in what I hope will be a series of debates. I think it has been a valuable initial debate. It has shown that there is a very real unanimity in this House on the urgent need to seize this moment to move ahead. Although differences have very rightly and properly been expressed about the definitions and about the very important need to protect individual liberty, I think all of us are anxious that these very real differences that have been expressed shall not in any way hold back the work that can go ahead almost without delay.
What impressed me so much in reading this Report was to find how much could in fact be tackled even before the new legislation is available. It is upon that, I am sure, that we shall test the sincerity of the comments made by Ministers during this debate, and upon the administrative action that they are able to take in the field already open for administrative action. We hope very much indeed that the comments made by the Leader of the House and by the Parliamentary Secretary will bear fruit in the developments that we hope we shall be able to see in local government welfare services


and in the actual provision for the hospitals, which is so badly needed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House takes note of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency.

ROAD ACCIDENTS, HADLEIGH

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

9.59 p.m.

Mr. Bernard Braine: I wish to draw attention to a matter which concerns both the life—

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

Mr. Braine: I wish to draw attention to a matter which affects both the life and limb of my constituents and other users of the London-Shoeburyness Road—A.13—where it passes through my constituency, and the way in which the Essex highway authority has been discharging its duties. I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for making it possible for me to raise this matter. I have taken this course with some reluctance for I had hoped that the matter could have been resolved in another way, but it has proved otherwise.
My purpose tonight is twofold: first, to expose one of the worst examples of official obstinacy and inefficiency on the part of a public authority that I have ever encountered; and, secondly, to prod into action those who have some responsibility in the matter.
Unhappily, danger spots on our roads are all too numerous. All of us can call examples to mind. The worst danger spot in my constituency is at the junction of the London-Shoeburyness Road and Woodfield Road, in Hadleigh. At this point, three people have lost their lives in the last two years and others have been injured. Everyone knows that this is a danger spot; there is no argument about it. The local authority knows; the local road safety committee knows; the police know; and the local residents know. Unless something is done soon to deal with the road conditions at this point it is almost certain that further fatalities and injuries will take place.
It might help if I set the scene. Between Hadleigh Church, which is in my constituency, and the western end of the County Borough of Southend, the London-Shoeburyness road curves for about half a mile. On the south side of the road there is a long stretch of open country, where one can look across the Thames Estuary towards the Kent coast. Drivers moving eastwards towards Southend from London tend to accelerate when they see this open country—all the more so when they find themselves emerging from the bottleneck at Hadleigh. They see this stretch of open road and their tendency is to go fast. Similarly, drivers coming from the built-up area of the County Borough of Southend, moving westwards towards London, do the same.
The carriageway, however, is only 30 feet wide, and it is not surprising that where the curve to which I have referred obscures vision, where the open country encourages drivers to put their feet down, there is a tendency for accidents to occur —and they occur with monotonous regularity. The danger is increased by the very heavy volume of traffic to and from Southend at certain times of the year. Only last weekend I was fortunate enough to obtain some up-to-date and authoritative figures which illustrate the heavy volume of traffic using this road.
On Saturday, 15th June—which was an exceptionally fine day— 16,782 vehicles passed in both directions between 10 a.m. and 12 midnight. On the following day, Sunday, 16th June, 20,440 vehicles passed during the same hours. On the following Saturday, 29th June, 14,748 vehicles passed, and on Sunday, 18,138 vehicles. I mention the precise figures so that those whose attention will. I hope, be drawn to what is said tonight will realise that these are authoritative figures.
The A.13 is not the only road into Southend from London. Some distance to the north, and running parallel to it, is the trunk road, A.127. I am informed from the same source that during the last weekend I quoted this road, which possesses a dual carriageway, carried about 40,000 vehicles. Thus we have the extraordinary position that the A.13, a narrow single carriageway, carries only 25 per cent. less traffic in peak periods over the weekend than the A.127, a trunk road with a dual carriageway. It is clear that these figures show that the A.13 is bearing an unusually heavy proportion


of traffic moving to and from Southend. It is clear, also, that special attention should be paid by those responsible to the known danger spots on that road.
I propose to unfold the way in which those responsibilities have been discharged by the highway authority. Last November, the vicar of the Parish of St. Barnabas wrote to me and complained that though he had raised the matter of this particular danger spot about twelve months before, no action had been taken. Apparently, following the death of one of his parishioners, he had written to the local authority, the Benfleet Urban District Council, and was told by that body that this was a matter for the county. He had pursued his inquiries; petitions had been organised, but nothing had happened. On 30th April last year the vicar wrote to the Chief Constable. He had a very prompt reply, within a day or so, saying courteously that his letter had been passed on to the county surveyor. He heard nothing further and did not even receive the courtesy of an acknowledgement.
In July, the vicar lost another parishioner, on this occasion an elderly lady, who was killed at precisely the same spot. He wrote again and inquired what was happening. This time he received an acknowledgement, but nothing more. The months slipped by and in November the vicar thought the time was ripe for a new approach. His church council asked me to intervene. I made the usual inquiries before writing to my right hon. Friend. The local authority, the Benfleet Urban District Council, revealed that there had been a long-drawn-out argument with the county. In this, they had had the support of the police.
I was advised that the police and the local authority considered that the ideal solution for this danger spot was the widening of the road and the provision of an island refuge. The county highway authority, on the other hand, took the view that the situation would best be met by the provision of a pedestrian crossing. My hon. Friend will know that the significance of this proposal was that the provision of an island refuge and the widening of the road would be the responsibility of the county, but the provision of a pedestrian crossing would be the responsibility of the local authority.
Now, the Benfleet Urban District Council, no doubt quite properly, declined to accept the proposal of the county on the ground that, first, there was insufficient pedestrian traffic to justify the installation of a pedestrian crossing and, secondly, there was need to slow down the traffic to prevent drivers from accelerating and overtaking at this point where visibility was so bad.
Nevertheless, the county authority was adamant, and—this is what I want to rub in—despite the fact that the official representative of my right hon. Friend, the divisional road engineer, as long ago as October, advised that an island refuge was the proper solution, it declined his advice. So we had this situation by the end of last year. The dispute had dragged on for many months. Two people had been killed and there had been a number of other accidents. An impasse had been reached.
At this point, perhaps I might remind my hon. Friend that Benfleet Urban District Council, the local road safety committee, the county constabulary and the Minister's own representative were all in favour of the provision of an island refuge and were opposed to the idea of a pedestrian crossing.

Mr. Speaker: This raises an interesting point in procedure. I was of the opinion, when the hon. Member applied for this Adjournment, that he was going to put the responsibility somehow on the Minister, but all I have heard tonight have been complaints against the local authority and not against the Minister. I do not know how far the Minister has any responsibility in what the hon. Member is discussing.

Mr. Braine: With respect, Mr. Speaker, I submit that to the extent that the county authority would derive funds from the Ministry, and to the extent that my hon. Friend has a local representative whose function it is to advise the county authority, there is some responsibility in this matter resting upon my right hon. Friend. It is my hope, in raising this matter in this way, that my hon. Friend —who I am certain, judging by the correspondence I have had with him—feels grave concern about this, will use his best offices to bring suitable pressure to bear upon the county authority. Otherwise, it is difficult to see how I may raise a matter which concerns so seriously the life and limb of my constituents.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent): I am not sure whether I can help very much here, but I certainly do not wish to prevent my hon. Friend from ventilating his grievance. I am bound to say, however, that my replies will draw attention to the fact that I am not responsible for this state of affairs. I am willing to grant aid to the work that my hon. Friend has mentioned, but my reply will be that the main deficiency is not mine, nor that of my Ministry.

Mr. Speaker: That is about the end of it.

Mr. Braine: Further to that, Mr. Speaker. I think that perhaps I might be of assistance to you and to my hon. Friend if I point out that a different situation has since arisen. The county has made a suggestion which my hon. Friend the Minister has, in fact, turned down, so, unless I am in a position to question my hon. Friend as to the reasons my right hon. Friend has intervened so decisively, we are back in the position in which we were when I intervened six months ago.

Mr. Nugent: Perhaps I can assist my hon. Friend. If you, Mr. Speaker, ruled it in order, I could make my reply in the terms of why we have refused the proposal put up by the local authority and prefer the alternative we suggested. That might perhaps bring this within the matters for which I am responsible.

Mr. Speaker: I am rather doubtful about all this. The more I have heard of this case as it developed the more it seemed to me that the hon. Member's complaint is against the county council, which, I presume, is the highway authority, and on the Adjournment we are concerned with matters of ministerial responsibility. I am doubtful whether what the Minister proposes to do would really be in order in this matter. I think that the hon. Member had ventilated his complaint before I awoke to the fact that it was possibly out of order, but perhaps he had better leave it there at the moment.

Mr. Braine: With respect, Mr. Speaker, may I make just one further point? It was precisely because an impasse had been reached that, finally, the local authority capitulated to the county highway authority's suggestion that there should be a pedestrian crossing. As far

as my constituents were concerned, this was a decision of a kind. At this particular point my right hon. Friend intervened, as he has power to do, to tell the county authority that he will not accept its solution. We are thus back in precisely the situation that existed six months ago, and I do, with great humility, submit that my hon. Friend has some responsibility here in that he has intervened.
Perhaps I may add this. During this latest period of impasse a third person has been killed, and unless someone takes it upon himself to make a decision—in this case, the county authority came to a decision which my hon. Friend as I believe quite rightly, turned down —this state of affairs will continue. There will be further fatalities as surely as night follows day.

Mr. Speaker: I have heard a lot of Adjournment debates, and it is usually the Minister who is the target of whatever criticism there is. An Adjournment debate cannot be used merely to attack a county council. But if there is any Ministerial responsibility which the Joint Parliamentary Secretary would like to discharge in this matter, the House would, of course, be glad to hear him.

Mr. Nugent: I wonder whether I may assist the House, Mr. Speaker, by making this suggestion. If my hon. Friend cared to direct his criticism against my refusal to accept the proposal of the local authority, I should then be pleased to reply to that. Perhaps that would enable him to keep in order, and to conclude his remarks.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has delivered his speech. I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary can reply to what has been said.

10.17 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent): Certainly, I will be very pleased to. I think that the substance of my reply should—if you rule it to be in order—deal with why my right hon. Friend and I have refused the proposal of the local authority and have preferred the solution which it has rejected. Perhaps it will be in order if I direct my argument to that.
I immediately acknowledge that my hon. Friend's argument is well grounded. This is, of course, a dangerous bit of road.


It is very heavily trafficked, and there is a danger for pedestrians crossing it. I sympathise with him in his anxieties to see improvement there.
Without going into the details of the various discussions and interchanges that there have been between the local authorities, I can say that what has emerged from these discussions is that the county highway authority—that is, the Essex County Council—has made a proposal that there should be a pedestrian crossing at this junction on A.13. After carefully considering this proposal, we have felt obliged to advise against it.
Although it is true that this stretch of road is subject to a 30-mile-an-hour limit, where we are prepared to consider pedestrian crossings, we think that this particular piece of road will be unsuitable for one. First, the traffic moves rather fast there—although there is a 30-mile limit —because, as my hon. Friend has said, the country has the appearance of being open country and, therefore, despite the limit, motorists tend sometimes to exceed it.
Secondly, not many pedestrians cross at this point. Thirdly, it is a winding road, where visibility is poor. We have found by experience that motorists will only give sufficient respect to a pedestrian crossing to make it reasonably safe for pedestrians to cross where it is fairly frequently used. Then motorists learn to expect that pedestrians will be on the crossing and they pay more attention to it.
The fact of the matter is that pedestrian crossings—this is a point of which one must never lose sight—do not afford any mechanical or automatic safety. The safety given to people on pedestrian crossings is solely the result of the judgment of pedestrian and driver. To achieve that necessary element of judgment, we have found that certain conditions are essential. One of them is a fairly regular flow of pedestrians over the crossing; the other is that there should be good visibility. Neither of those conditions obtains here. In addition, the traffic travels rather fast.
Therefore, we felt that the crossing was not the right solution, but, recognising that something was needed, we suggested to our Divisional Road Engineer that a central island should be placed in this road so that pedestrians would have the

greater safety of crossing the road half at a time. As all of us know, there is no greater contribution to safety than a central refuge because it allows people to cross one half of the road at a time. My personal conviction is that these central islands make possibly a greater single contribution to road safety for pedestrians than anything else and I am warmly in favour of the proposal that we made here.
Because the road is so narrow, as my hon. Friend has rightly said, it would, however, be necessary to widen it before a central island could be put there safely without interfering with the normal flow of traffic. Our advice to the highway authority was to provide a central island, combined with the widening of the road for the necessary length to make it safe. We offered the authority the 75 per cent. grant which would be normal for a Class 1 road of this kind.
As you have already observed, Mr. Speaker, not infrequently Ministers find themselves being criticised on matters of this kind, but here is one where we have been ready and willing to contribute a fairly considerable sum of money. However, the highway authority took the view that the remaining cost was too heavy. The total expenditure will probably be something in the order of £10,000, and it felt in all the circumstances that it was not justified. There the matter lies.
We have over a period done what we can to encourage the highway authority to see the wisdom of our advice and, as we see it, the unsoundness of its proposal. In response to a Parliamentary Question by my hon. Friend recently I said that I would use my good offices locally, and I have had letters sent to the various people concerned to see if it is possible to get a reconsideration of our proposal. We have, at any rate, had a response from the Traffic Commissioners in regard to the siting of the bus stops, which I think could with advantage be altered.
I hope that it may be possible to persuade the Highway authority to give further consideration to our advice in this matter. I agree with my hon. Friend that something is needed there, and if there is anything I can do to help bring about safe conditions there I shall gladly do it.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past Ten o'clock.